


bad moon rising

by gone_girl



Series: we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world, but on that account we shall be more attached to each other [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Season/Series 01, dean and sam are arab. thats it really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 68,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28437480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gone_girl/pseuds/gone_girl
Summary: Sam prays to a cold, pale God, although he is and has always been hot-blooded, sulfuric. Dean whispers the name of his mother's God quietly, so that his father won't hear him. There are many American cults of worship, and none of them will ever have a place for the Winchester brothers.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world, but on that account we shall be more attached to each other [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083002
Comments: 118
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for nongraphic discussion of rape and domestic violence, short scene containing police brutality

In the beginning, there was

No. No. Sorry. Let me start over.

On the last morning at the end of days,

Wait. Fuck. I’m not doing this right.

It is Samuel Winchester’s last Halloween.

Is that it? I’m not- okay. Okay. Sorry. Last time, I promise.

It is Jessica Moore’s last Halloween.

She’s bringing her boyfriend with her to a Halloween party. He won’t dress up, though, and she’s only mostly joking when she says that bothers her. Her boyfriend, the aforementioned Sam Winchester, is very young, and sad most of the time, and he loves Jessica- Jess, sorry- very much. But there are some things he can’t bring himself to do, and Halloween walks carefully on that line.

“Okay,” Jess says. “Yeah, fine.”

Sam teeters on the edge of explaining himself. She watches him do this. As always, he falls back, safe. He offers an apologetic smile. She looks into big brown long-lashed eyes (baby cow eyes, she’d say if she was a Midwest kind of girl, but she’s from Los Angeles) and forgives him.

Jess always forgives him. She is the only one who does this. She thinks she knows that, but she doesn’t. Sam, on the other hand, is so painfully aware of it that he’d cut his own tongue out before telling her.

Such is the tragedy of Samuel Winchester and Jessica Moore.

Oh, shit. That was it. I should have started with that. Anyway, the Halloween party.

It’s unremarkable, as Halloween parties go. Sam is designated driver, as always. He volunteers to do this. His friends (to clarify: they are Jessica’s friends. But for the sake of the story, and future misfortunes, Sam calls them his own.) give him less shit for it than usual, as he has a big interview on Monday and they’re busy crowing over his success. That’s the nice thing about Halloween party kind of friends.

Jess gets drunk. Sam’s friends get drunk. Jess pulls Sam out to the dance floor, where music is playing that Sam doesn’t recognize. If you knew Sam, you would think that this makes him intensely uncomfortable. But it’s Jess. She’s breathing evenly on his neck, her left hand is pressed against the small of his back under his shirt and her right is cupping his jaw, thumb stroking over light brown skin, and her body is soft where his hands lay gently on her waist. And so Sam lets her dance with him. Sam Winchester is very young, and sad most of the time, and he loves Jess very much. Sam thinks often that he spends all his time waiting for moments where loving is so good and strong and bright that there’s just no room left for sadness anymore. This is one such moment. Jess is the first person that he has ever been able to love in this way, and she is also the last.

And in fact, this is the last moment of Sam’s life where the love outshines the sadness.

I’m so sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Jesus, this story is sad.

Sam drives everyone home. He brings Jess back to the little apartment that they share. She’s sobering up now, but she’s very sleepy, and she’s thinking that she wants some water and some pizza and some sex, probably, but she’s going to fall asleep before she can do anything more than hydrate. Then she’s going to be woken up again, by a shout from the living room.

“What the _fuck?”_

“Sam?” Jess calls, blinking awake in the darkness of their shared bedroom. 

“Uh, it’s fine!” Sam’s voice is unusually high, and he’s breathing heavily. It’s what he sounds like when he’s just had the shit scared out of him. Jess is unfamiliar with this tone. She’s never seen Sam scared in four years of knowing him. 

Dean Winchester knows this tone very well. He also knows that it’s a very mild just-had-the-shit-scared-out-of-him tone. What’s going to follow is a lot of little brother anger, and a little embarrassment. So Dean doesn’t worry about it.

“What the fuck,” Sam says again. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Saying hi,” Dean says. 

Jess chooses this moment to stumble into the living room, wearing sweatpants and Sam’s My Chemical Romance t-shirt.

“Still dating white girls?” Dean asks.

This is a bit of a sore spot. Sam scowls.

“Who are you?” Jess asks, baffled.

“I’m Dean.” This line is delivered with a bright, broad grin, and a hand stuck out to shake. Dean, you see, expects her to recognize the name. She only blinks owlishly at him, growing more confused by the second.

You really can’t blame her. Sam and Dean, it must be said, look nothing alike. Dean takes after their mother, shorter, darker, and stockier than Sam. He does have a lovely smile, but, strangely enough, people rarely find it trustworthy. He has big hands and big shoulders, and their father’s leather coat fits him well. Sam is taller and lighter than his brother, with delicate features and a brow that seems permanently knit in bemusement. He looks like their father, although slightly narrower in build. Still, he’s a physically imposing man, big and obviously powerful, and it is entirely because of his sweet face and quiet temperament that this fact is the last thing anyone notices about his appearance.

Really, the only feature Sam and Dean share are their eyes. They’re huge, dark, and framed by the longest lashes Jess has ever seen on a boy. They inherited this trait from their mother, although only Dean knows this.

“Sorry,” Jess says slowly. “Sam…”

“This is my brother,” Sam says, with the air of someone who has just been forced to admit a humiliating secret. Dean’s smile slips, and he lowers his hand.

“I, uh, gotta talk to you about Dad,” he says, some of his bravado gone now. Dean is built on nothing but bravado, though, so most of it remains.

“What about him?” Sam knows he’s being mulish. Sam always knows when he’s being mulish. He does it anyway.

“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” Dean says, very carefully, putting weight on every word. “And he hasn’t been back in a few days.”

Jess feels the shift in the room. She doesn’t know how it happened, or what exactly Dean said that triggered it, but she knows Sam well enough to know this much.

Sam puts a hand on Jess’s back. Usually, this is a request for closeness, and Jess has never had the heart to deny him something he so obviously misses, so she moves towards him. He realizes his mistake, and steps back. 

“I gotta talk to my brother, all right?” Sam asks.

Jess is incredulous. She has so many questions, primary among them being _why didn’t you tell me you had a brother?_ Sam knows this. He’s already thinking of apologies and explanations, but for now, he stands firm. So Jess goes back to bed.

“You really just…” Dean gestures vaguely. _You really have this whole normal life, away from us, without us._ He has never been able to articulate himself well, which Sam knows. They have always been able to understand each other. Even now, as Dean tries to hide his hurt feelings, Sam sees them plain as day.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks, folding his arms. He hasn’t forgiven Dean. Dean knows this, although he hasn’t had to face it yet.

Dean sits at Sam’s dining room table and pulls a small notebook from his coat. It’s paper and cardboard, half the wire spiral snapped off, and full to bursting with notes and newspaper clippings. “Silverton, Oregon,” Dean says. “Outside Portland.” It’s a ten hour drive.

“You want me to-” Sam cuts himself off. He thinks of Jess. He thinks about paying rent on this apartment. “I can’t fucking go with you to Oregon, man. I have a life.”

“Dad is in trouble,” Dean says evenly. He’s had years of practice mediating this fight. Sam is about to protest further, his head spinning with the nastiest things he can come up with, _I don’t fucking care, let him save himself, you should just leave him out there_. He stops himself. 

Dean flips open his cell phone and plays a voicemail from their father. Sam visibly tenses at the sound of their father’s voice. 

“Listen, Dean, there’s something bigger going on here. I’m not sure, but I think it might be a real lead. Call me when you get this.”

“A lead,” Sam repeats. “I can’t believe you’re going along with this.”

The lead in question is, in fact, not really a lead. But this matters very little. What matters is this: Maryam Winchester died in a house fire. Twenty two years later, John Winchester receives a call about a house fire in South Dakota. He reviews the evidence, but he is old, tired, and has not slept in thirty-six straight hours. He leaves his son a voicemail, and in his haste to get to South Dakota, leaves the job he’d been working in Oregon behind. Humiliated and angry that he’s been misled, John Winchester won’t have the balls to face his sons for another six months. 

Sam and Dean don’t know this. They will never know this. I don’t really know if that matters.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean says. “He could be in danger.”

When Sam relents, he insists to himself and to his brother that it’s for Dean, and no one else, and that they have to be back by noon that Monday. Dean smiles, cocksure again now that he doesn’t have to be alone, and agrees.

Sam bends over Jess and kisses her forehead softly. He’s come up with a hundred lies, but when he looks at her, sees her half angry and half concerned, he can’t bring himself to offer her any one of them. He says only this: “I’ll be back soon. I love you.”

“I love you,” Jess replies, and promptly falls asleep.

I hope it brings you comfort that their last words to each other were affectionate. Later- much later- it brings Sam some comfort.

They leave that night. Dean wants to stay, get some sleep, eat Sam out of house and home the next morning, but Sam stands firm: they have sixty hours to get to Oregon, wrap up the case, find Dad, and return to Stanford. Sixty hours. That’s all. Each boy independently vows to irritate his brother as much as humanly possible if sixty hours is all they have.

First, they get some gas.

“Jesus, you guys still drive this thing?” Sam asks. The Impala is freshly polished. He thinks that seems like a marvelous waste of time and money.

“I’ll be dead in the ground before I give it up,” Dean says. He’s digging around in the trunk, and he emerges with a tube and a gas can. “Dude. Which one of these people do you hate?” He gestures around the parking lot.

“I don’t know,” Sam says, frowning. He does know. He has a list of neighbors who are on his shitlist. But his shitlist is a personal and private thing, and he only keeps it because he’ll never do anything about it.

“Okay,” Dean says. He looks around and chooses the most expensive looking car in the lot. It brings him an immense amount of joy to siphon gas from rich people, and the fact that they usually keep their tanks full is a wonderful coincidence.

There’s no unfunny way to steal gas. You put a hollow tube in the tank, and suck the tube like a straw to get the gas moving so you can direct it into the can. Dean is excellent at it, because he’s been doing it for fifteen years. Sam less so, because Dean has always done it for him. I’m telling you this now to save me time, because every single time they do it, they accuse the other of being gay. Just assume that it happens, without me having to bother myself to say it.

Sam laughs. Dean flips him off. They stand around for a few minutes, listening to the gas can fill up, and then Dean tugs the tube from the Lexus’s tank. Sam fills up the Impala’s tank as Dean tosses the tube into the trunk and uses his sleeve to wipe the prints off of the Lexus.

“This car is not fuel efficient,” Sam says. “You’d probably have to steal less if you got a Prius.” He says this specifically to bother Dean.

“I’m straight,” Dean replies. “Let’s go.”

Dean intends to blast music in the car. It’s how he keeps himself awake, usually, the heavy guitar of classic country and rock, but Sam’s been awake all day. Dean doesn’t know this, of course, but he does recognize the pouty look on Sam’s face that he gets when he’s tired, the puffy pads under his eyes, the dark circles that he’s always had that become like bruises after too many hours awake. They haven’t seen each other in years, but it doesn’t matter. Dean would know what Sam looks like tired even if he had spent twenty years alone.

Sam sleeps in the car. He dreams about his father, drunk and brooding in a bar, his phone dead in his pocket. This is real, and will happen tomorrow night. Sam will never know this. He dreams of silly little scenes most nights. His boss, petting her tabby cat. The homeless man on the corner, tying and retying his shoes. His barista, studying for her organic chemistry exam. Sometimes it’s people he doesn’t even know. He’s learned not to put much stock in these dreams, although he usually enjoys them. He told Jess about these dreams once, and she laughed and told him to go take a creative writing class about it.

“Dude. Wake up.” Dean is hitting Sam’s shoulder.

“Fuck. What?” It’s bright outside now, noon at least, and Sam is blinking awake. He’s out of practice. He hasn’t had to be alert within seconds of waking up in four years.

Dean, who has had no sleep but a lot of coffee, is a little manic. “Get the fucking- there’s- fuck. Get the IDs from the glove, man. What are you doing? Get the-”

“Fuck off,” Sam says, swatting Dean’s hands away irritably as he digs through the glove compartment. “I’m _looking._ Dude, are these- since when do we pose as _marshals?”_

“Makes things easier,” Dean says. “Give me mine.”

“Do I get one?” Sam asks. He’s had a moment to adjust now, and he’s scanning their surroundings. They’re on the edge of a bridge that’s been cordoned off with police tape, and a few cops are milling around on the far end of the bridge.

“No, what the fuck? Were we supposed to use your pimply seventeen year old driver’s license picture? Just give me mine.”

“You look crazy,” Sam informs Dean. It’s true. Dean snatches the fake badge and slams the door on his way out.

Sam watches from the car as Dean swaggers up to the cops and shows them the badge, calm as anything. Dean has been lying for a living fifteen years now, and despite the red eyes and too-bright smile, manages to wheedle some useful information from the cops. Namely: a man named Troy Williams disappeared along this highway two nights ago, and his last phone call was to his girlfriend, when he told her he was crossing this bridge. 

“That’s all?” Sam asks, disappointed. 

“We’re just getting started, man,” Dean says. His optimism is genuine, if a little buoyed by twenty dollars’ worth of Dunkin’s over the last ten hours. Sam grunts, and they drive into town for food. They pay with a credit card belonging to Jacob Stevens.

“Still scamming, huh?” Sam asks, a little derisive. He’s been spoiled by his W-2.

“Hey, man, fraud is hard work,” Dean says. He isn’t joking. Their father makes him do most of the grunt work now, and that includes the tedium of trolling for loose social security numbers. The image makes him chuckle. He imagines flipping couch cushions for social security cards.

At this precise moment, there’s a woman crying in the booth next to theirs. She has yellowing bruises on her ribs and stomach, tucked where they are invisible to the world, and a split lip hidden carefully with bloodred lipstick. Her sister wishes she wouldn’t cry, and is sending up countless, silent prayers of gratitude.

“Sarah,” Amy moans. “I think there’s something really wrong.”

“Hush, honey,” Sarah murmurs. “It’s going to be okay.”

“How could he just disappear?” she asks.

Sam and Dean’s ears prick identically. Sam, with his baby cow eyes, approaches first.

“Hi,” he says timidly. The shyness is real. It’s been a long time since he’s done this, and he feels scummy trying to mine information from the grieving woman. 

“Can I help you?” Sarah asks, chilly.

“Are you guys friends of Troy?” Sam asks.

Amy lets out a wail, and Sarah hugs her closer.

“We’re his cousins,” Dean says hastily, turning in his seat. Sarah looks at him skeptically, doubting that Troy is related to someone with skin as dark as Dean’s. But Amy starts crying again, and Sarah decides that she doesn’t give a shit who these people are.

“Okay,” she says. “Do you need something?”

“We heard about what happened,” Sam says, his eyes wide and earnest. “We’re worried. Do you know where he might be?” Amy already believes him.

“God, I just keep thinking…” Amy shakes her head. “My dad used to tell me this stupid old story about men disappearing on that stretch of road. Isn’t that insane?”

It’s exactly what they’ve been waiting to hear.

“Which one?” Dean asks, leaning forward against the divider.

“Centennial Highway,” Amy says, sniffing.

Sam is nodding sympathetically, giving Dean time to stuff the last of his sandwich into his mouth and start buzzing with theories about Centennial Highway. They make a quick exit, greased with Sam’s apologetic smiles and well wishes, leaving Amy still sobbing into Sarah’s shoulder. Dean is gleeful at the lead, and claps Sam on the shoulder as they make their way out to the parking lot.

“Time for research,” Dean says happily. He doesn’t enjoy research, and never has (although he’s gotten better at it over the years), but the thought that they’re this much closer to finding their father is cheering him. It is, of course, false hope.

“Time for research,” Sam agrees. He doesn’t really enjoy research either, but he’s much better at it than Dean, and there’s a certain amount of satisfaction he takes from it. One of his favorite professors in undergrad begged him to do a Master’s, and maybe a doctorate. Sam might have done it if there was anything in particular he was passionate about, or would have enjoyed doing an extended thesis on. But there was nothing, and his boss at his paralegal job told him she’d be willing to put in a good word for law school. And so.

Unfortunately for the both of them, the research proves fruitless. There are plenty of disappearances on Centennial Highway, eighteen men going back thirty four years, but none in particular stick out, and there’s no record of any actual murders or missing women on this stretch of road. Dean insists that it’s a woman. Sam keeps demanding why, and Dean just shrugs and says it always is, when the victims are all men. Sam knows he should accept this, because Dean has fifteen years of real experience and if he’s honest with himself Sam has barely five, but he can’t.

It doesn’t matter. Man or woman, missing or murdered, nothing seems right. The sun is setting when they finally call it.

“Let’s sleep on it,” Sam suggests, mostly for Dean’s benefit. He’s falling asleep at the computer.

“I can go longer,” Dean mumbles.

“Okay,” Sam says. “I’m tired, though.”

They amble out to the car together and make their way to a motel. This is a routine that’s become unfamiliar to Sam, but he falls back into it more easily than he’d like to admit. Two-queens-two-nights-please-yeah-here’s-my-card-thanks, and they’re inside.

Dean crashes immediately. Sam orders Chinese food and wanders around the motel. He’s not really sure what he’s looking for or why, but as he walks past identical green doors, he feels something crunch under his foot. It’s rock salt. He knows this before he even crouches to check.

There’s a lockpicking kit in Dean’s bag. Sam is out of practice with it, but it still only takes him a few minutes to get the door open.

Sam doesn’t know exactly how he knew this had been their father’s room (I do, of course. Sam’s lucky guesses are generally of the supernatural kind), but once he steps inside, it’s plain that he was right. It’s a disaster, for one thing, with newspapers and food wrappers papering every surface. The rock salt, for another. Sam closes the door softly behind him and begins searching the room methodically. He finds nothing of their father’s, no clothes or books or weapons left behind, but there are a few crumpled notebook pages that bear useful information.

_woman in white?? No name_

_Deaths in colder months only_

There’s more, but either the handwriting is illegible or the words mean nothing. Sam folds up the papers carefully and tucks them into his pocket. He spends several hours that night hunched over his computer, eating Chinese food and reading about women in white. It has been a long time since he knew these kinds of things off the top of his head.

Sam falls asleep only a few hours before Dean wakes up, just after dawn. Upon finding that Sam has eaten two dinners of takeout, Dean says, “Fuck you.” It half wakes Sam, but he can’t be bothered to respond, so he just rolls over. He hears Dean mutter something under his breath. Sam assumes, wrongly, that Dean is cursing him again. The Impala roars to life in the parking lot, and Sam has already fallen back to sleep.

Dean is looking for food, a twenty four hour diner or a convenience store, but before his journey can bear fruit, there’s a cop car tailing him. Dean thinks ruefully that if he didn’t love this car so damn much it probably wouldn’t give him away as often. Then he parks the car and walks the rest of the way to the diner. He calls Sam. Voicemail answers.

“Hey, man. I’m about to get arrested,” he says, conversational. “You should be fine, ‘cause I only got cash on me, not the card we used for the room, but, uh, I don’t know. Law school me out or something, that would be nice. Car’s on Flowers Street. See ya.”

It’s a mean arrest, with much shouting and shoving and frisking. Dean thought it might be. He’s just a shade too dark for this kind of small town cop. He ruminates on this as they let him stew in the interrogation room. He wonders what they’ll accuse him of, when they’re finished with the _sit in your own head for hours_ routine. Besides, of course, impersonating a federal officer. There’s always something.

The detective is an older white woman named Amanda Herschel. Amanda Herschel is not very smart, but she is the smartest in her department, and fears nothing more in the world than being called soft by her colleagues. Dean lands on Amanda Herschel’s desk like a Christmas present.

“Marshal Edelman,” she says. “Jacob Stevens. Dean Winchester. Is Winchester real? You don’t look like a Winchester.”

Dean expects the disgusted turn of her mouth as she looks at him. He doesn’t expect his legal name to come out of it. He smiles up at her.

“What do I look like, then?” he asks. “I won’t accept anything lower than an eight.”

“A John Winchester split from this station just a couple days ago,” Herschel says. “He left behind him a book and a shotgun full of salt. Is that a new torture technique you people get up to?”

“A book?” Dean asks, before he can stop himself.

She takes it slowly from her jacket pocket and places it on the table. It’s leather-bound, old. Dean has been staring at this journal for over fifteen years.

“Lot of crazy shit in this book,” Herschel says quietly. “Lot of talk about seventeen men. Number eighteen who, according to Mr. John Winchester, died the other night. He’s only listed missing. But you know that, Marshal Edelman.”

“Am I a suspect?” Dean asks, laughing despite himself. “I’m fucking twenty six, man, you think I killed somebody thirty years ago?”

Herschel hits him, close-fisted. It’s not a hard blow, but Dean isn’t expecting it.

“I would like you to cooperate with me,” Herschel says coolly. “Where is John Winchester, and who are you to him?”

The first answer that rises to Dean’s tongue is honest. He has no idea. But he refuses to admit this to her.

They’re interrupted.

In the ten minutes it takes for the police to realize that the station is not on fire, Dean picks the lock, steals his father’s journal, and breaks out of jail. Interestingly, this is not the first time he’s run this routine.

“I said law school me out, dude, what’s the point of that big fat degree if you don’t use it?”

“I can law school you back in,” Sam offers.

Anyway.

Here’s what they know about the case so far: men disappear on Centennial Highway on cold nights. It’s probably a woman in white. They have no name and certainly no burial site.

“Well, fuck,” Dean says.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “And also, we have to wrap this up tonight. I need to be home noon tomorrow.”

“Well, fuck,” Dean says again.

“And also, we have to avoid the cops, ‘cause they’re definitely looking for you.”

“Awesome,” Dean says. “I’m hungry.”

“We should order food,” Sam says. “I parked the car behind the motel, but that’s not going to give us much time.”

Oddly enough, it’s the delivery guy who gives them one of the last pieces of the puzzle.

“Getting cold out, huh?” Sam asks, in his sweet, friendly way that makes people feel bad if they don’t answer in kind.

“Yeah,” Charlie the delivery guy says.

“Sucks about Troy Williams, though,” Sam says. “You heard about that?” Nearby, out of the delivery guy’s view, Dean looks up incredulously. _Seriously?_

“Yeah,” Charlie the delivery guy says.

“I heard it was a ghost,” Sam pushes, ignoring Dean as he rolls his eyes.

“I heard that too,” the delivery guy says after a long moment. He’s recalling something. Sam’s eyebrow lifts slightly. “But honestly, I don’t think it is.”

“Don’t believe in ghosts?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” Charlie the delivery guy says. “I mean, I’ve been on that highway. Same bridge. This girl in a white dress and nothing else- it was fucking freezing out, really weird- she flagged me down. I let her get in. She asked me if I could bring her home.” He pauses, looking unsure. “I said, well, sure, unless you want to go to the cops first. I mean, it looked like she was robbed or something. She started crying, said she just wanted to go home.” Charlie sighs. “So I asked her where she lived, and then next second, I swear, she disappeared.”

“She got out of the car?” Sam asks.

“No, man, I was going like sixty an hour. Doors and windows closed. She disappeared like she was never there in the first place.” Charlie shrugs. “That place is definitely fucking haunted, dude, but it didn’t seem dangerous. Honestly, I think it’s just an urban legend. Sucks about that guy who went missing, but I think probably the story is just somebody who saw that girl out there and started connecting dots that don’t exist.”

“Oh,” Sam says. 

Charlie blinks, and then flushes. “Uh, anyway. You owe me eighteen fifty.”

Sam hands him a twenty and tells him to keep the change. Charlie drives off wondering why the fuck he just spilled his guts out to a stranger, why he even felt the urge to. He doesn’t know why, and Sam doesn’t know why, but I know why, and I think you do too by now.

“Well, you heard him,” Sam says, closing the door. “Urban legend. Sad accident. Death echo, probably.”

“No way,” Dean says. “Maybe she’s just got a type. We should go looking for her.”

“It’s probably a coincidence,” Sam says. He plops the food on the table. “I was talking to people this morning, and nobody liked Troy Williams. He beat every girlfriend he ever had. Nobody’s losing sleep over him being gone, and honestly, man, I don’t think we should either.” For all his trust in research and history, Sam does a remarkably good job of convincing himself that eighteen men over thirty four years in a town of less than ten thousand isn’t a big deal. I don’t blame him, though, and neither should you. He’s had a bad feeling all day, and he’s itching to get home to Jess.

“Oh, come on,” Dean says. “What if the next guy isn’t a piece of shit, though? We don’t know how she’s picking them, right? Look, what’s the harm in checking?” He doesn’t say this, but he can’t stand the thought of finding their father without something to show for his absence.

“I don’t want to spend all night running after a hunch, Dean,” Sam says angrily. “I have a really important interview tomorrow. Like, really important. If you want to chase a death echo, fine. Go. I’m getting a good night’s sleep.”

Dean scoffs. “It’s four in the afternoon.”

“I obviously meant tonight,” Sam says snippily. Then he softens. “I’ll help you do more research. But then I’m going to sleep, all right?”

The research is fruitless. That night, Dean is hoping that Sam will relent and come with him, but he doesn’t.

The drive to Centennial Highway is quiet. Dean is so careful watching for cops that he actually almost misses the figure in white with one cold thumb sticking up.

He slows down. She gets in the car.

Charlie was right. Her hair is a straggly mess, and there’s bruises on her exposed arms and neck. She’s barefoot, and the white dress is more of a too-big shirt. Dean feels sorry, thinking of how she must have died out here.

“Can you take me home?” the girl asks, her voice thin. “I miss my mom. I want to go home.”

“Sure,” Dean says, slowly. He has his hand resting on the shotgun wedged between his seat and the door, but she isn’t attacking him. “Where’s home?”

“Please.” She sounds like she’s about to cry. “I just want to go home.”

“Okay,” Dean says. He starts driving. The girl doesnt speak again or even look at him.

He’s starting to think this whole thing really has been a coincidence, that this really is just a mournful, quiet death echo. Then he blinks, and she’s gone. In the same moment, the car fills with the strong smell of ozone.

Almost too quickly, Dean brakes. He looks around, shotgun pulled now, but she’s nowhere to be seen, inside or out of the car. Next to the highway is a ditch. Dean looks at it. Then he guns the engine, and drives back.

In the motel, Sam is asleep. His mind has been spinning with the same story for two straight days.

He sees a girl. Oversized white shirt, boot cut jeans, a backpack. Her name is Carina Sandmeyer. She’s nineteen, and a year ago she ran away from home. She wants nothing more now than to go back, although she isn’t sure if her mother will still have her.

She’s hitchhiking, trying to make her way down the coast, but she’s had rotten luck all day. She’s been walking along this road far too long. She’s tired, and cold, and if she walks just twenty more minutes, she’ll reach Silverton.

A car stops to pick her up. The driver is a man named Jeremiah Tufts.

I will spare you the details. Sam watches the entire awful scene, but that is his and Carina’s curse. It’s all over now, and Carina’s poor memory has been through enough.

There is no headstone. Carina always had a reputation as a hippie, a junkie, a lackadaisical kind of girl, and so nobody who knew her worried after her very much. Silverton, of course, never hears the name Carina Sandmeyer, and there are no death certificates or obituaries to peruse, no news articles of a poor homeless young woman without a friend in the world.

Dean throws the door open. In the same moment, Sam jerks awake in a cold sweat.

“I know where she’s buried,” Dean says. “It’s not a death echo.”

“I know,” Sam says, breathing hard. “I know.”

The moment the two of them step into the ditch, armed with rock salt, gasoline, and shovels, the smell of ozone fills the air.

“Oh, shit,” Dean says.

“I’ll dig,” Sam says. “Watch my back.”

Dean mumbles something quietly. Sam just makes it out, but there’s no time to puzzle over it, because then the air crackles oddly and something slams into Sam, knocking him to the ground. Dean fires the shotgun. There’s a shriek, and then the weight is off of Sam. He’s sustained a cut on his forehead from falling directly onto his shovel. He’s blinking blood out of his eyes as Dean helps him up.

“She won’t be gone for long!” Dean shouts in Sam’s ear. “God, fuck, man, we’re gonna have to dig up this whole fucking-”

Sam snatches up his shovel, which is now smeared with his own blood, and looks around wildly. He runs a few feet away and plunges the shovel into the ground. Dean stares at him for a moment, but decides it’s as good a place to start as any. He busies himself pouring salt in a good sized perimeter around Sam, but before he gets a chance, she bowls him over.

“I just want to go home!” she screeches. Her breath is hot and stinking. Dean throws salt in her face, and she falls back. She’s shifting into something horrific, something with claws and a gaping mouth. It’s nothing Dean hasn’t seen a hundred times this year, but it’s awful every time.

“Gas!” Sam screams.

“You found the bones already?” Dean yells back, incredulous.

“Help me dig them up, it might go faster-”

Dean fires the shotgun at her again, and she dissipates with a terrible scream. He scrambles forward. Sam didn’t need to dig far to unearth a ribcage.

“Piece of shit,” Sam says savagely, stabbing into the dirt.

“You’re telling me,” Dean mutters, starting to dig alongside Sam. He thinks Sam is talking about the ghost.

“Didn’t even bury her right,” Sam says. He’s not paying any attention to Dean anymore. The pain in his head, the blood in his eyes, the adrenaline of the last few minutes, it’s all getting to him. The shovel is starting to tear blisters into his school-soft hands.

The burial hadn’t occurred to Dean, but he doesn’t give it time to bother him. He pauses to complete the salt circle around the miserable grave and goes back to digging. It’s perfect time, too. She materializes and slams herself against the barrier, letting out unearthly shrieks.

“Let me go home!” she screams. “Let me go home!”

“We’re trying!” Sam yells back. “I’m trying!”

When they burn the bones, she makes the worst noise Sam has ever heard.

“Let’s get you back to the room,” Dean is saying.

“What?”

“Your head.” Dean’s hand, unbearably gentle, brushes away Sam’s bangs, and Sam is starting to come back to himself. “Gotta take a look at it.”

In the car, Sam says, “I don’t know if I feel good about that.”

“You’re not supposed to feel good about it,” Dean says. The sad thing is, he believes this. But he’s not talking about the same thing Sam is talking about.

“She wasn’t a monster,” Sam says. “She was just a person.”

“Oh,” Dean says, understanding dawning. “Yeah, well. I don’t know, man. She wasn’t happy like that.”

“No,” Sam says. “I guess not.” He wants to go home.

Sam lets Dean herd him into the room.

“We have to leave soon,” Sam says.

“I know,” Dean says. “I’m counting.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes as Dean presses an alcohol-soaked rag to Sam’s forehead.

“How did you get this, anyway?” Dean asks.

“When she ran into me,” Sam says. The cut stings. He winces. “I fell onto the shovel.”

Dean snickers. “Rookie mistake, Sammy.”

“Shut up.”

Dean shakes his head. “You really are out of practice.”

“Yeah, dude, it’s been four fucking years.” The instant these words leave his mouth, Sam wants to take them back. They’re an awful reminder of how long Sam has been pretending Dean doesn’t exist, how long since Dean stood silent as their father disowned Sam.

But Dean, God bless him, takes it at exactly surface value, and just laughs. He’s in his element this way, tending to his baby brother’s wounds and scolding him for being irresponsible, and so something that would have started a fight three hours ago is now just Sam making Dean laugh.

“Well, I don’t think it needs stitches,” Dean says, looking at the cut.

“Oh, good,” Sam says. Dean can tell he’s winding up for a sarcastic retort, and is privately overjoyed at how easy it’s been to fall back into their brotherly routines. “I’ll look like I got in a bar fight for my interview tomorrow, but hey. At least I didn’t need stitches.”

Just to be an ass, Dean cleans the cut with alcohol again. “Does your head hurt?” he asks.

Sam looks at him incredulously. “No, my balls hurt. Yes, my head hurts, asshole.”

Dean bursts out laughing. He grabs a bandage from the table and opens it, shaking his head. “I’m making sure you don’t have a concussion, you dick.”

“Oh.” Sam is enjoying himself too, mostly. There’s no one he’s allowed to be this mean to at home. “I don’t think so.”

Dean presses the bandage to Sam’s cut, running over the adhesive with his thumb. It hurts. “Since when are you a medical professional?” Sam demands.

Dean snorts. “I forgot what a bitch you can be.” He stands up. Sam could still have a concussion, and he wants to be completely sure he doesn’t before Sam’s interview. He searches the table for a flashlight, but it’s not there.

“Yeah, well.” Sam watches Dean rummage through his bag, searching for something, and Dean murmurs something quietly. “What?”

Dean looks up. “Oh, nothing,” he says. “I just can’t find-”

“You keep saying something,” Sam says, watching Dean closely. “Before you got arrested yesterday. Again when we dug up the girl’s bones. What did you say?”

This is just about the last thing Dean expected Sam to ask. The question has caught him off guard, and he’s trying to come up with a way to lie about it that doesn’t make him feel like a terrible brother. “It’s just… it’s something Mom used to say,” Dean says finally. This is, in fact, the truth, which only embarrasses him more. He goes back to digging in his bag, and finally finds the flashlight.

“Mom?” Sam asks, genuinely surprised. Maryam’s death has ruled the last twenty two years of the Winchester home, but her life has always been a taboo subject.

Dean doesn’t want to talk about this. He sits in front of Sam and turns the flashlight on. “Eyes open,” he says.

“I don’t have a concussion,” Sam says stubbornly. He has no idea if he does or not, but he’s much more interested in what Dean has to say right now.

“Eyes open,” Dean insists, and Sam relents. It’s as Sam sits there, quiet and still, letting Dean check his decidedly not-concussed pupils, that Dean decides that he might as well explain himself. It’s the least he could do.

“She said it all the time,” Dean says finally. “I don’t remember the last thing she said to me-” (The last thing she said to him is I love you, if it brings you some comfort) “-but I remember that. Bismillah. Dad never liked it, so I never told you. I don’t even know what it means.” It’s strange, that Sam has only noticed now. Dean has been mumbling it like a swear word all his life.

“Are your ears ringing?” Dean asks. He knows he’s flushing with embarrassment, and is grateful his skin is too dark to show it.

“It means, ‘in the name of God,’” says Sam. He has never known his brother to be religious, and is still sure he isn’t. But it never really occurred to Sam that Dean might cling to a word like that.

Dean looks at him like he’s insane. “Are your ears ringing?” he repeats. Sam wants to cry.

“No,” he says instead.

Dean doesn’t speak again until he’s on his feet and has his back to Sam, putting their supplies away. “How do you even know that? About-”

“I took a World Religions class,” Sam replies, knowing that it sounds ridiculous. It is true, though. Sam thinks about that, how absurd it is to learn from a textbook his mother’s language.

Dean laughs, like Sam knew he would. He shucks off his dirty shirt and socks and tosses them to the floor.

Sam glares at him, privately glad they’re back to joking around. “Can you be a human being?” he asks, in his best scandalized little brother way. “God, the basket is right there.”

“You’re such a fucking geek,” Dean says, who is feeling the same relief. “We’re leaving in like three hours. We’re just gonna shower and get some sleep. Gotta get you to your interview.” He doesn’t mean for this last part to come out as earnestly as it does, and he slams the door behind him in hopes that Sam won’t see his embarrassment.

And so.

A few hours later, Dean is driving Sam home. Sam’s phone is dead. I have always wondered if things might have been just slightly different if it wasn’t, and he’d received the calls earlier. Probably not. It doesn’t matter now.

Sam flips idly through their father’s journal. There’s a newspaper clipping: ANIMAL ATTACKS IN BLACKWATER RIDGE. Dated three days prior.

“We might find him there,” Dean says.

“Hope you do,” Sam answers.

They reach Sam’s apartment building in the late morning. Sam finds a Halloween party friend sitting on the stoop, her face streaked with tears.

“Where have you been?” she asks. Dean is watching from the car. Sam can feel his eyes on his back.

There has been a car accident. Jess was on her way home from the grocery store, and was struck head-on. Both drivers died on impact.

I find it necessary to tell you now: this was pure chance. If Jess had paused to buy a Snickers on her way out, this would not have happened. The Yellow Eyed Man has no idea who Jess is, and wouldn’t care if he did. Jess’s death was a tragic and avoidable and perfectly human accident.

Dean, of course, stays, leaving the journal and the newspaper clipping locked in the glove compartment. Sam drifts around the apartment like a ghost, eating food Dean prepares for him. He doesn’t go to his interview. He gets calls, fewer than he expected: one from Jessica’s mother, informing him that the funeral will be this afternoon, and two from assorted Halloween party friends. After the first day, after the funeral, his phone goes silent.

Sam wants to go home.

On the sixth day, he gets a call from his boss. It’s on the landline. Dean is making breakfast, and Sam really can’t be bothered to go to the other room, so he just leaves it on speaker.

“Hi, Sam. Just wanted to offer my condolences once again.” His boss, funnily enough, is named Jessica Shaughnessy. She goes by Jessica, and she doesn’t know how to do what she has to do right now.

“Thanks, Jessica.” His voice is tired.

“It’s so tragic,” Jessica says aimlessly, knowing that this is tactless and probably making it worse. But she doesn’t want to get to the point of this call.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He doesn’t have the energy to wonder why she’s calling.

“I do need to talk to you about your position at the firm, though,” Jessica says, hating herself.

“Okay.”

“When do you think you’re going to be able to come back?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“All right.” Jessica drums her polished fingers against her desk. “Sam, you know you have a home with us, right?”

“What?” he asks. It’s the first genuine emotion he’s shown on the call: confusion.

“You’ve worked so hard to get where you are,” Jessica says sincerely. She likes this kid. If she’s honest, he’d started out as a diversity hire, but Jessica has really come to admire his modesty, his dedication, his intelligence, his genuine talent. If it was up to her, she’d be giving him support all through law school, and offer him a shiny six figure position at the end of it. But he’s been gone all week without even calling in. Her superiors are pressing her, and there’s only so much leeway they’ll give to a paralegal. “And I feel for you, I really do. I want to keep this job open for you.”

“Okay.” His voice is dead again.

“Do you think another week is enough time?” she asks.

“For what?”

Jessica pauses. “To, um, rest.” She’s fumbling.

The quiet stretches on so long that Jessica has to check if the call is still connected. “Sam?”

“Yeah. Uh, actually, I think I’m going to go to Montana.”

Jessica doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t that. “ _What?”_

“Montana,” Sam repeats. “Yeah. Gonna spend some time with family. Go camping.”

Sam has never mentioned his family in the year he’s worked at the firm, not even in passing about holidays or small talk.

“Okay. Well, Sam, if you can call me and give me a definite plan in the next week, I can do my best to hold your job for you,” Jessica says. “But any longer and I can’t make promises.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jessica,” Sam says, and then hangs up without another word.

“What a fucking cunt,” says Dean, so furious he wants to break something. But everything in reach belongs to Sam, and so he restrains himself.

Sam doesn’t say anything. He just goes back to bed.

Dean is thinking right now that at least Sam has been able to grieve in his own home, and that maybe that is helping, somewhat. He’s being earnest in this line of thinking, but he’s wrong. Sam doesn’t have a home anymore. He wonders if he ever did. He wonders if it even counts, making a home in a person, because how is that possible? How is it possible, to have everything and then to have nothing that fast?

Honestly, I don’t know exactly what made Sam decide to go searching for his father. It might have been Dean, hovering anxious and mute in his periphery, or it might have been Jess’s side of the bed, because it doesn’t smell like her anymore. It might have been his fucking cunt of a boss. I don’t know. But here’s my theory: Sam was never the prodigious young pre-law Protestant he found it so easy to pretend to be at school, and so could never feel at home there. Jess was an anchor, around which he could base this fiction of a person without driving himself insane. But she’s gone, and who the hell will buy his act now?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mention of alcohol abuse

Sam is keeping a secret.

They’re driving endlessly, jackets on because the heat is broken and Montana is cold in November. Dean is singing along to Johnny Cash, drumming against the steering wheel. They stop at gas stations so Dean can shoplift bottles of water and Sam’s favorite candy bars (Milky Ways). Sam is keeping a secret.

I won’t tell you right now. This secret burns low and nauseous in Sam’s stomach. His big body is hunched and ashamed against the passenger door, and he keeps picking at the cut on his forehead. Dean tells him to stop it, it will get infected or scar, but Sam doesn’t stop. He thinks maybe if it starts bleeding again, maybe all the horror of the last week will just bleed out and there will be no secret left in him, nothing about his childhood or his father or Dean or women in white or Jess, Jess, oh God, Jess.

I won’t tell you right now. Sam couldn’t bear it if you knew now. He can hardly even speak to Dean.

And so they arrive in Blackwater Ridge, Montana, where two young men have been killed in an animal attack.

_ DNA testing was necessary to identify the remains, as one had been so badly mauled that all identifying features were impossible to distinguish. The second has not as yet been found, but is presumed deceased. _

“That’s sick,” Sam says.

“It is not sick, Sam,” Dean says, mock offended. He puts down the newspaper. “Murder is not cool.”

“I meant it was disgusting, you freak.” It’s a hollow echo of their old banter.

Dean watches Sam push his breakfast around his plate. He’s trying to remember how he helped his father after the fire, reasoning that it must have worked. But all he can really think of is how he’d learned to take care of Sam, changing diapers and heating up formula, and he doesn’t think that would be helpful now.

“You ready to go, man?” Dean asks, gentle now.

Sam looks up. He deliberates about putting on a smile and a brave face, and eventually decides against it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

In the car, Dean sings some more. He tosses a few more candy bars at Sam. He’s waiting for Sam to respond, to make fun of him or shout. Dean would prefer even anger over this listlessness. He’s familiar with it, at least. (He doesn’t quite realize or remember this, but this is how Dean got his father through the worst of his grief. Grieving men need to take their anger out on something.)

Sam knows what Dean wants from him, but he can’t give it to him. He feels like a stranger in his own body. He knows this makes no sense. He’s back in the Impala, looking for a monster to kill, with an awful sick secret turning his stomach; in short, he’s back in the most familiar self he’s ever been. But he fears that if he opens his mouth and speaks, Dean will cease to recognize him, that it will become suddenly clear that Sam does not belong here.

They pull in the car at the small ranger’s station. 

“I got this, man, don’t worry,” Dean says, clapping Sam’s shoulder as they get out of the car. 

“Okay,” Sam says.

There’s only one person in the ranger’s station, an older white man wearing a crisp uniform reading a book behind his desk. His name is Stanley Budgins, and he hates Dean and Sam on sight.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says, stopping before the desk and ringing the little bell there. It’s partly out of habit, and partly because he likes ringing the little bell that lives on a desk. Budgins touches his finger to it to stop the sound.

“Oh-kay,” Dean says after a moment. “Me and my brother here want to go camping.”

“Camping?” Budgins says skeptically. “It’s thirty degrees.”

“Hiking,” Dean amends. He has no idea if that makes it any more believable. “We just wanna know about, uh, you know, safety procedures. Shit to keep in mind, you know.”

Budgins closes the book and sets it down. “First thing would be don’t go camping in below freezing weather,” he says. 

“Sure,” Dean allows. “But other stuff. My brother, he’s pretty set on going.”

Sam lifts one hand and waves limply. Budgins frowns. “I see what’s happening here,” he says. “You’re here about that animal attack.”

“Well-” Dean never gets the chance to finish his sentence. Honestly, he doesn’t know what he was going to say. Budgins gets to his feet and plants his hands on the desk, leaning forward.

“You’re friends with Haley Collins, aren’t you?” he demands. “Listen to me. It was a goddamn bear, and we are looking for Paulson. Go back to the reservation and stop fucking worrying about it. All right?”

Haley Collins, as luck would have it, is parking her car outside the station now, rehearsing what she plans to say to Budgins today. She notices the big black classic car parked outside, thinks for a moment that she despises the type of person who would own a car like that, and gets out of her car.

Two young men are coming out of the station, and Haley overhears the shorter one speaking as they come down the steps toward the black car. To her surprise, he’s talking about her.

“-information than we could’ve asked for,” he’s saying. “Haley Collins from the reservation has been sniffing around. That’s our lead. Also, that guy was two seconds from taking his own personal revenge on us for 9/11, so-”

Sam makes eye contact with Haley, and he elbows Dean. “Shut up,” he says.

“What?”

Sam walks up to Haley, bold as anything, and asks, “Is there a reservation around here?” He’s learned to trust his hunches lately. He wishes he’d learned earlier.

Haley scrutinizes him. “Why?”

“We’re looking for Haley Collins. We wanted to ask her about some animal attacks here,” Sam says, faux-casual but watching her closely.

“I’m she,” Haley says, crossing her arms. “Ask me what?”

Dean comes forward. She’s much shorter than the both of them, but her jaw juts defiantly as she looks at them, and her black eyes are wary. She’s dressed almost exactly the same way they are: jeans, worn boots, and a flannel under her coat. Dean feels a kinship with her instantly, a sentiment that is not returned in the least.

“Just what you thought about it,” Dean prods. “If it really was an animal.”

Sam and Dean are both expecting her to be defensive, or uncertain. Instead, she lowers her arms, and her young face softens.

“It wasn’t,” she says. “And the cops out there looking for that boy are going to get themselves killed.”

“What was it, then?” Sam asks.

“A monster,” Haley says simply.

Sam and Dean exchange a look. Sam is wondering if it really could be this easy. Dean is thinking about the diner they passed on the way here.

“Let us buy you coffee,” Dean says.

At the diner, Haley doesn’t drink from her coffee cup, just wraps her hands around it to let the warmth seep against her palms. Sam and Dean are watching her, attentive.

“It’s some kind of animal,” she says. “Not of the type you should find in the mountains, you know, not the type that’s born and dies like it should. It appeared here a month ago.”

“A month?” Dean interjects. “We only saw the article about the two from last week.”

“You would,” Haley says, staring down at her coffee cup. “Everyone dead so far’s been Ojibwe.”

This is one of the fatal flaws of John Winchester’s hunting style. You can only track a creature whose victims have made it to the public eye. You can only kill a monster that scares a newspaper editor.

“Do you know what it is?” Sam asks.

“There’s no survivors,” Haley says, shaking her head. “This monster, it’s not something the Midew elders recognize.” At Sam and Dean’s twin looks of confusion, she elaborates. “Oldest religion on this land. We’ve always been able to deal with monsters here, when we needed to.”

“Have you met a guy named John?” Dean asks. “Looks like Sam here, but older. And whiter. He would have asked around about this stuff.”

Haley frowns. “No,” she says. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

Sam wants to take the time to think his answer through. He wants to be honest. He wants to tell Haley that they’re looking for their father, looking to restore a home he never wants to return to, looking for revenge for a woman twenty two years dead.

“It’s what we do,” Dean says. “Hunting monsters. Saving people. Kind of a family business.”

“Oh,” Haley says.

“You do the same thing, don’t you?” Sam asks.

Haley has heard about people like this, who wander the country in search of something to kill. It sounds terribly lonely to her. “Not really,” she says. “I help my home protect itself.”

It all hits Sam all over again when she says that, Jess’s death, his lost job, the apartment he’s broken the lease on. So, carefully schooling his features, he mumbles something about having left his phone in the car and leaves Dean and Haley alone in the booth.

Dean is too worried for Sam to hold much of a conversation with Haley, so they exchange contact information and leave. In the car, Dean and Sam are mostly quiet. Dean asks, once, if Sam is all right, having given up on trying to bait Sam into his old self, but Sam just gives one short affirmative answer. Dean doesn’t play any music.

When they reach a motel, Dean lets Sam go into the room without saying anything. Sam’s grief is so thick and pressing, suffocating almost, that Dean feels shamefully glad for the reprieve. He stands in front of the vending machine, scanning it for Milky Ways, but there are none. This fact, more than anything else that’s happened today, makes Dean feel horribly useless. Jess is dead, their father is missing, and there’s no Milky Ways in the goddamn vending machine.

Dean stares down at the five in his hand. A tab of packing tape is hanging off one end, a little worn now, so that he can feed it in and then pull it out. This five has seen a hundred vending machines.

He gets plain chips and water for them both. Then he gets a Twix bar so that he can get change back in quarters. The quarters he’ll use at a laundromat. The Twix is a sad substitute for Sam’s favorite.

It doesn’t matter. Sam has no idea how long Dean agonized at the vending machine. He’s researching aimlessly on his laptop, but they don’t have enough information- there must be a million urban legends about unseen monsters in the woods- and it’s fruitless.

“Went shopping,” Dean says, tossing his loot onto the table. 

“You mean scamming,” Sam says, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Same thing,” Dean says, trying not to show how overjoyed he is to hear a halfway Sam-like reply.

Sam sighs and closes the laptop. “Have you called Dad?” he asks.

“‘Course.” Dean tears into the chips. “No answer. Did you find anything on the case?”

“I think we should leave.” Sam has been thinking about this since they left the diner. “We know Dad isn’t here. We should go looking for him.”

Dean stares. “Are you serious?” he asks. “People are dying, man. Five already.”

“They don’t need us to save them,” Sam points out. “Haley is already on this case, and you heard her. She and her people have been doing this for a long time. They’ll figure it out.”

“Sure, probably,” Dean says, incensed now. “But Dad left that clipping for us to find. He’s not sloppy. He didn’t just forget to write an entry for it. He knows there’s people already on it here, but he meant for us to come here. We’re doing what he wants us to do.”

“Who gives a shit what he wants us to do?” Sam demands. “You said yourself he could be in trouble. Why the hell should we listen to him when he might be getting himself killed? We need to find him.”

“He has a plan,” Dean says firmly. “He always does, Sam. He probably doesn’t want you running off into danger not knowing what it’s gonna take to kill the thing that killed Mom. We gotta take it slow, all right?”

Neither of them are right, really. John Winchester does intend for his sons to kill the thing at Blackwater Ridge. But he doesn’t know the Ojibwe are stewards of this land, and it isn’t meant to be a practice run for Sam. He isn’t in trouble, either. He’s just wandering, aimless, searching desperately for a lead to offer up to his family while they keep busy at smaller monsters.

“Look, man,” Dean says, quieter now. “This is good work, all right? We’ll give Haley a couple days, just see what she needs. Help out a little. It’ll be an easy job, we’ll come out knowing more than we did yesterday, and somebody’s going to live. Isn’t that worth it?”

Of course it is. Sam closes his eyes and relents.

Dean calls Haley. Over the phone, the three of them spend a couple of hours researching, trying to pool the meager information they have to understand what they’re dealing with, but it’s no use. Sam, in frustration, calls it at around seven and takes the car to buy dinner.

“This fucking sucks,” Dean says, staring at the laptop.

“Yeah,” Haley says, sighing. “I was really hoping you guys would have something.”

“Yeah.” Dean winces. “Sorry. Guess we’ve been pretty useless so far.”

“You kidding?” Haley asks. “I’ve been working on this for a month. I have nothing. My sister is miserable.”

“Your sister?” 

Haley pauses. She remembers the way Dean looked as Sam sloped off to the car, the anguished concern as he absentmindedly tapped his ring against his coffee cup. “Yeah,” she says. “Her boyfriend was one of the first people to die. And his mom. She sits at home crying all day, and I can’t fucking do anything about it.” She exhales shakily. 

“Once they grow up,” Dean says, “it’s hard to protect them.”

“I will, though,” Haley says with conviction. “I will.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, feeling sorry for her. He doesn’t believe her. How could he? He has never known a home like Haley’s.

“What about you?” Haley asks. She’s curious about these nomadic hunters. “You said this was a family business.”

Dean wonders if their father would be angry if Dean told this woman about their lives. (He would, but Dean has always thought too highly of him.) “Our dad raised us doing this,” Dean tells her. “We’ve been running all over the country killing monsters as far back as I can remember.” He’s never said this to a stranger before.

“Do you like it?” Haley asks.

Dean laughs, a little disbelievingly. The question has never crossed his mind. “Do  _ you  _ like it?”

This gives Haley no pause at all. “Yeah,” she says. “I mean, it’s not really about killing monsters, though, for me. Or, it’s not always about killing monsters. It’s about community. Not violence. It’s a spiritual thing to build a home, you know?”

“Oh,” Dean says. He can’t think of anything else to say. It has never crossed his mind before that hunting could be compatible with a community.

Haley mistakes his hesitation for discomfort. She laughs a little awkwardly, feeling foolish for having bared so much of herself to a stranger. “I sound like my grandma.”

“No,” Dean says quickly. “Or, maybe you do, I guess. I’ve never met your grandma.”

Haley laughs, genuine this time. “I hope you never meet her,” she says. “She’d hate you.”

Dean snorts. “Believe it or not, that’s not the first time a girl has told me that.”

Dean and Haley get along much better than either of them could have guessed, and are still talking and laughing on the phone when Sam comes back with food. He doesn’t interrupt them, but Dean looks almost guilty when Sam walks in. He says goodbye to Haley and hangs up.

“What you got?” he asks. “Sandwiches?”

“Steak for you,” Sam says, nudging the foil-wrapped sub towards Dean.

“What’d you get?” Dean asks, tearing into his sandwich. He isn’t really curious. Sam knows that, and doesn’t bother answering as he starts eating his own.

They have an unremarkable evening like that. Lord of the Rings is playing on the movie channel, and Dean gets excited. Sam eats his Twix. He feels like a kid again, eating garbage and watching movies in the motel room with his brother as they wonder where their father’s gone off to. It isn’t nostalgic. Sam has never liked the idea of youth, and ran as far away from it as possible the moment he could.

They’ve never been children, not really. But they’ve never grown up, either.

Haley calls them early the next day for a reconnaissance hike. Dean debates the benefits of different candies for several minutes in the convenience store, before Sam finally makes the decision for him.

“Why peanut M&Ms?” Dean asks, still lingering over the Twizzlers.

“Protein,” Sam replies. “For the hike.” He’s only half joking.

Dean nods, satisfied with this explanation. He’s eaten half the bag by the time they reach the meeting spot with Haley.

“You two don’t go hiking much, do you?” Haley asks, looking between them with amusement. “You’re not really dressed for it.”

“I’ve been once,” Sam says, a little stung. It’s true. He went hiking with some of Jess’s friends two years ago, and they made fun of him for dressing in jeans and flannel then, too.

Dean doesn’t get it. “It’s just walking, isn’t it?” he asks. “What, should I buy whole new boots?”

They set off, Dean singing  _ These Boots Are Made For Walking  _ loud and off-key. It’s a cold, sunny day today. It’s hard to feel very fearful with the late morning sunlight dappling the ground, passing around the bag of peanut M&Ms (Haley, at least, has brought granola bars and water), laughing when Dean forgets the words. They should be fearful. They should, in fact, be terrified, because among the three of them, they have no weapons to destroy the thing that stalks them now. But it’s a beautiful day, clear sunlight kissing smiling brown faces, and even Sam can’t help feeling good.

The first hint that they get that something is wrong is the smell of alcohol.

It’s faint at first, just an odd tang on an otherwise sweet breeze. Sam smells it first, and as they keep walking, it strengthens. It’s Dean who notices the blood spatters on the ground, and it’s Haley who notices the man huddled under a tree, nursing a handle of vodka. Another empty bottle lies next to him.

His name is Daniel Brown. He came into the woods last night with his friends, to go camping and get drunk. Daniel opened the bottle and poured himself a single shot. In the time it took for the vodka to burn its way from his throat to his stomach, all three of his friends had been gutted. 

“Oh, God,” he mutters. “Oh, God.” He lurches forward and splashes alcohol into Haley’s face. She steps back sputtering.

“What the fuck?” she says angrily.

Dean is staring at Daniel, whose eyes are bloodshot and whose breath stinks of alcohol, at the blood spatters and bone fragments scattered through the area, at the half-empty liter-bottle cradled in Daniel’s arms.

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “Sam. Shit. Get the bottle away from him.”

“What?” Sam asks. His gun is drawn, and he’s looking around in terror.

“Sam!” Dean shouts. Something is stirring in the forest, barreling towards them. It would outrun the bullet, Dean knows, and so he doesn’t wait another moment. He wrests the bottle away from Daniel, who is sobbing drunkenly with fear and confusion, and takes a swallow of the alcohol. Haley stares at him in disbelief.

“Drink!” Dean yells, shoving the bottle at Sam. “It’s a hidebehind, man, drink it fucking now!”

Sam’s eyes widen, and without another word, he drinks from the bottle.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Haley demands. “What the hell is a hidebehind?”

“Hates alcohol,” Dean says, thrusting the bottle at her. 

Haley takes a moment to process, but she knocks back a swig of the alcohol. It’s cheap and disgusting, and she coughs, but she gets it down.

Carefully, Dean screws the cap back onto the bottle. His stomach is warm- he had just a little bit too much- but he’s clearheaded. The bottle is a little more than two thirds full. It’s going to have to do.

The hidebehind is one of the nastier creatures of the forests. It moves faster than any human or bullet can, and often the only saving grace for an unlucky hiker is that it is strictly territorial, and often will wait to be approached before it pounces. It also, for whatever reason, despises alcohol, and will not touch one with alcohol in their body.

“So that’s how he’s survived this long out here,” Haley says, looking at Daniel and the empty handle on the ground. He looks a sorry mess, shivering and flushed and swaying where he stands, too drunk to find his own way out of the woods. He doesn’t seem to have understood Dean’s explanation.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Poor motherfucker.”

“Okay,” Sam interrupts. “Killing it. What, we douse it and set it on fire?” Sam remembers, when he was ten, that Dean and their father left him behind on a hunting trip. That’s what they’d started to do, when Dean got old enough to help and there was no one else to watch Sam. They’d left Sam all by himself in the motel room, watching TV, and returned full of stories and swagger. Dean, that night, confessed to Sam that he hated the taste of whiskey.

“Just about,” Dean says. He’s thinking of the same event. “The trick is keeping it in one place.”

“How do we do that?” Haley asks.

“Usually we’d need a lot more of this,” Dean says, shaking the bottle. “But we don’t. So we need bait.”

“Bait,” Haley repeats. “For something that moves faster than a bullet.”

“Easy peasy,” Dean says, flashing her a grin.

The trap goes like this: they find the bloodstained tent Daniel and his friends meant to sleep in. They splash it with vodka, and pour alcohol on the ground in a broken circle around the tent. Haley and Sam each take another sip and retreat to watch. Dean sits inside the tent, smelling the stink of old blood and liquor, saying  _ bismillah  _ and fiddling with the ring on his thumb. A few minutes’ walk away, Daniel sits by himself, shivering.

It is a long wait. Dean has no idea how long it takes for a sip of alcohol to fade from his system, and he has no idea if the hidebehind will be able to smell its would-be prey from inside the stinking tent. He has no idea if there is even enough vodka left to set the thing on fire.

These impulsive plans have always seemed so much more plausible with his father around. But Dean puts on an easy smile, assures Sam they’ll get out of this fine, assures him that this is all routine. This is exactly how John Winchester always played his hunts with Dean, cool and smiling, don’t worry, Dean, I’ve got a plan. But Dean doesn’t make this connection. Not yet.

The hidebehind is little more than a black, flitting shadow, and the only warning you get when it passes you is a little gust of air. Daniel has felt this gust of air a hundred times in the twelve hours since this nightmare began, and although he’s dozing, he wakes up immediately when he feels it again now. He starts vomiting immediately, although there’s nothing left in his stomach but bile. Even as he throws up, he reaches out for the bottle, and begins to cry when he cannot find it. 

The distant retching is what spurs Sam to action, and he’s pouring alcohol on the ground to close the circle before he even registers that the creature has run past him. But it works.

It’s almost sad, watching the black blur throw itself desperately against the barrier that a human being could cross with ease. Haley and Sam stand there for a moment, watching with equal fascination and horror, hearts hammering identically in their chests.

“Spray it!” shouts Dean. “Come on!”

There’s hardly any alcohol left, and they’re painfully aware that most of it must be falling to the ground. But abruptly, the thing starts to scream, and the black blur becomes slower, and it gets easier to aim. The screaming- it’s inhuman, it’s awful- grows louder and louder as the hidebehind grows slower. 

Then Dean, from inside the tent, opens his lighter. The tent catches fire immediately, and holes begin to burn into the polyester. The hidebehind, sensing that its prey has become available, lunges weakly, but it reaches the fire before it can get very far into the tent. With a final, terrible howl, it falls back, and Sam and Haley empty the last of the vodka onto it.

It’s easy to see its form now. The thing is almost humanoid, arms and legs and claws that look as large as fingers. Dean and Sam, at the same moment, are reminded of every ghost they’ve ever burned, dozens of people-things who were in anguish for their final seconds. The fur burns away to reveal a face: grayish skin, wide-set yellow eyes, an open, bloody mouth full of fangs.

Then the fire swallows that too. The scream cuts off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence in the lovely sunlit day.

Dean is sitting on the ground where he’d scrambled away from the burning tent, watching in silence as the monster burns. He becomes aware that its massive paw had clipped him shallowly under his collarbone, and his shirt is soaking slowly with blood.

But he’s alive, and so are Sam and Haley. The monster burns down to its claws, and Dean gets slowly to his feet.

“All right, Scooby gang,” Dean says hoarsely. “Let’s head out.” He has one hand pressed to the cut on his chest, but it keeps bleeding. It will scar.

Daniel has passed out in a pool of his own vomit. Sam and Haley carry him. They’ve killed the monster and saved him. A year from now, Daniel Brown will drink himself to death. He will be buried at the age of twenty three. 

But now, they focus on getting Daniel into the backseat of Haley’s car so she can bring him to the hospital. He moans faintly as they shove him clumsily into the car.

“Think he’ll remember anything?” Sam asks.

“I hope not,” Haley says quietly. “For his sake.”

The cut on Dean’s chest is hurting now, with the adrenaline faded from his system. He tosses a meaningful look at Sam, and Sam understands.

“Thanks for your help,” Sam says, closing the door on Daniel.

“Right,” Haley says. “I guess you guys are leaving, then?”

“‘S’what we do,” Dean says. “Damn, we should have saved some of that vodka.”

Haley snorts. “You people are insane,” she says. “I’ve never heard of killing monsters drunk.”

“Winchester touch,” Dean says, grinning at her.

They linger for another moment. Haley feels that she should say something else, but she can’t think of anything, and Daniel still needs to get to the hospital. “Right,” she says again. “Well. Good luck.”

When she drives off, Dean feels a little sad that he’ll never see her again. He entertains, for a moment, the idea of saving her number next time he switches phones, but dismisses it just as quickly. Only three numbers ever survive the monthly circulation of prepaid flip phones.

“All right,” Sam says, glancing at Dean’s wound. “Let’s get you patched up.”

“Since when are you a medical professional?” Dean asks, hoping for a laugh. Sam smiles a little, but that’s it.

The cut is still bleeding as they drive back to the motel. Dean insists on driving anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean is watching Sam.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says abruptly. Sam looks up, more than a little surprised. Dean apologizes only slightly more often than their father, who does not apologize. Dean almost regrets speaking already, but he pushes forward.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything when you left. When Dad made you leave,” Dean amends quickly. “And, uh. I’m sorry about Jess, man.”

Now it’s Sam who’s watching Dean, and Dean who stares through the glass to avoid his brother’s gaze. 

The first time John Winchester killed a hidebehind, it wasn’t with Dean. It was with a far more experienced hunter, an older man named Bill Harvelle who liked waxing philosophical in the aftermath of the hunts.

“Funny, ain’t it?” he asked. “The bottle will protect you from a quick death, but it’ll sure give you a slow one.” John did not understand what Harvelle meant, and still doesn’t. Sam, however, is learning.

“I was angry at you,” Sam says honestly. “For four years.” He thought he’d yell when he saw Dean for the first time in years, he really did. But he hasn’t, and he doesn’t think he will.

“I know, Sammy,” Dean says quietly.

“But Jess is gone.”  _ And you are all I have left.  _ Sam doesn’t need to say it for them both to hear it. Dean thinks of what Haley said, about how building a home and taking care of it is a spiritual thing. He wonders about the death of a home, wonders if that’s spiritual too, a crisis of faith he hasn’t had yet.

I know it all seems bleak for these two. I can’t tell you it isn’t, or that it one day won’t be. But I can tell you this: there is love ahead. It will never be of the kind that seems to outshine all the sadness, but it will be there. They will go back to the motel room. Sam will say that they should take a night to give Dean’s cut to heal. It’s stopped bleeding, so Dean overrules him, but it makes Dean feel warm and cheerful that Sam thought to say so at all. After four years of stillness, of anger, of distance, it takes them two weeks to be brothers again. 

They hold onto the peaceful moments, the ones where the slow death doesn’t seem to hang over their heads, the ones that feel halfway like resting. You should too. In this story, that is all they will ever get.


	3. Chapter 3

Minnesota is cold this time of year, even as far to the south of the state as they are. But in the empty laundromat, with the machines humming around them, it’s warm.

Dean lies on his back on the machines, smoking a lazy cigarette, wearing only jeans and his jacket, bare feet kicking sleepily. A bruise is forming on his shoulder, a big dark one, one that hurts right down to the bone. Sam, by the door, is wearing his last pair of jeans, and he keeps worrying at his split lip with his tongue. He’s scamming the change machine, letting the reader mark the five and then tugging it out by the tape. There’s one clean sock left between the two of them, and Sam is filling it up with quarters.

The fluorescent lights flicker. The air smells of detergent and warmth. Sam comes back to where Dean lies, and bumps his leg gently with the sock.

“I could beat you up with this,” Sam muses.

“Please, God, don’t,” Dean says sleepily, his eyes still closed. “This machine feels like a massage chair, dude.”

Sam pulls a quarter from the sock and flips it. It clatters onto the vibrating machine. Tails.

“You’re spared,” Sam says.

Dean opens his eyes. He picks up the quarter and flips it at Sam, who catches it. They play a lazy game of catch, flipping the stolen quarter back and forth. It’s three in the morning, they’re nursing the little scrapes and bruises of the night, and they’re waiting for their laundry. Between them, there’s only one load to do.

All this has little to do with the case they’ve just finished; for that matter, it has little to do with the case they’re about to take on. But it’s a good moment, and I thought you’d like to know about it.

Dean dozes. Sam pulls his long legs up to sit cross-legged on the yellowed plastic seat, and he plays Brick Breaker on Dean’s old phone. Dean’s already bought a replacement, but the new one doesn’t have any games.

They haven’t heard from their father. They won’t for a long while. Sam is still keeping his secret. It weighs him down, makes him feel strange in his own life. But sometimes, like now, when he’s so exhausted that his shoulders ache and his eyes sting, and they’re all alone in a laundromat, he feels a united sort of strange with Dean, and the secret doesn’t bother him as much.

When the laundry finishes, they get dressed and leave. On their way out of town, Dean stops the car, steals gas from a BMW, and then declares the job officially over.

“You’re a hero,” Sam says.

They sleep late the next day, sore from the job. Dean’s phone- the new one, without any games- rings. Dean snuffles into his pillow and pretends not to wake up, so Sam, reluctantly, drags himself from his bed and picks up.

“Mm,” he says, still tired.

“Um, is this Dean Winchester?” The voice on the other end of the line is high and uncertain. Sam rubs the sleep from his eyes.

“Who’s this?” he asks.

“It’s Jerry,” Jerry says.

“Okay,” Sam says after a moment. “Who’s Jerry?”

Dean groans into the pillow. “Who the fuck is it, Sam?”

“It’s Jerry,” Sam answers.

“Who’s Jerry?”

“Working on it,” says Sam. He directs his next question at Jerry. “Who’s Jerry?”

Jerry is now very confused. “I’m looking for Dean,” he says. “Uh, John Winchester said if I needed help, I should call Dean.”

Sam feels very cold all of a sudden. “Dean,” he says, his voice curiously flat. “Dad sent us a job.”

Dean sits up. “Through Jerry?” he asks blearily. Sam has the insane urge to laugh.

It turns out that Jerry has not spoken to their father directly. But, sometime since the last time they called him, their father has set up a voicemail message, telling anybody looking for help to look to his son, Dean. They listen to the voicemail together. Dean’s shoulders straighten a little, his chest puffs out, his eyes shine at his own name sounding kind in his father’s voice. Sam sees Dean’s pride like it’s through a fogged window, and wonders if he’s really so wrong for hating the affection in their father’s voice.

Because, you see, John Winchester tells everyone he meets about his sons, how much he loves them, how he’s proud of them. Dean, he says, like fucking Hercules, twelve labors and then some. Sam, a genius, just you wait you’ll be seeing the name Winchester in the papers for a good reason this time. Everyone has seen the magnitude of John’s love for his children except his children, although they will hear it secondhand many times. When they do, Dean thinks it was all worth it, the days spent watching his brother with a gun itching under his pillow, the nights spent in a holding cell when he screwed up the hunt. When they do, Sam thinks savagely that he’d rather see his father dead than see him affectionate, thinks he can’t fucking take back the fear or the hunger or the isolation, and hates him for trying.

And so.

They drive down to Iowa to meet Jerry. Jerry is a small, nervous man, bald, with eyes and hands that twitch as he talks and ears that stick out comically. Dean has come up with about six different jokes, all involving Tom and Jerry to some degree, by the time they finish the conversation.

“So,” Sam says as they leave. “What do you think?”

“I think,” Dean says slowly, “that guy is so jumpy nothing wouldn’t scare him. Like, he probably runs from a big blue cat named Tom on his way to work every morning.”

Sam snorts. “Well,” he says, “there was definitely something on those tapes.  _ No survivors,  _ two minutes after the crash? There’s something here.”

“You think we should take a look at the wreck?” Dean asks.

Sam is about to remind Dean that Jerry told them he wouldn’t be able to get them in to look at the plane’s wreckage, but then he remembers all the fake badges in the car’s glove compartment.

“We could,” he says after a moment. “Think we’ll pass for Homeland Security?”

“Fuck yeah, dude,” Dean says, shrugging. “Might as well try it, right?” He looks at Sam’s young face, frowning. “We’ll have to get you an ID, though.”

“I’ve never impersonated an officer before,” Sam says thoughtfully. “It doesn’t look that hard when you do it.”

“Sammy’s first felony,” Dean says, clapping Sam on the back. “Come on, man. Let’s get you a passport sized photo.”

There’s no time to call their fake ID guy, because he lives in Utah and they don’t have spare cash besides. Sam turns the pages of their mostly-empty address book in amusement. 

“Pastor Jim, Missouri, Bobby. Who are the rest of these people? You have a fake ID guy, a gun guy, three cursed objects guys, a chop shop guy, a weed guy- what’s the point of this? When the hell are you ever in Oklahoma, to need a weed guy there?”

“His weed is fucking awesome,” Dean answers. “And if I ever need, like, a thousand bucks, I drive his product to California.”

“How are you not in prison yet?” Sam marvels. He puts the address book back in the glove compartment as Dean pulls up in front of the copy shop.

They take the pictures. Dean prints six copies, and they spend the hour painstakingly gluing Sam’s photo over their father’s fake IDs. By the end of the afternoon, Sam has both means and motive to commit his first felony, and together he and Dean are preparing opportunity.

“Wait,” Sam says. “Is scamming change machines a felony?” Dean doesn’t know. (It’s a misdemeanor.)

They retreat to a motel for the night to start building their case and doing research. (“It’s a misdemeanor,” Sam says. “Good to know,” says Dean, who couldn’t care less.) They spend some time combing the flight logs. The plane went down barely fifteen minutes into the flight, the moment it reached full altitude. There were only three survivors: a pilot, a flight attendant, and a passenger. The passenger has since checked himself into a mental hospital.

“Might not mean anything. He’s traumatized, dude. He watched everyone die on that plane,” Sam points out.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and he got traumatized by a monster, too,” Dean replies.

The passenger’s name is Thomas Jones. Dean, thinking of Jerry, is trying not to laugh when Tom introduces himself.

“How have you been since the crash?” Sam asks.

“Shitty,” Tom says. He already dislikes Dean.

Dean rearranges his face into a more suitably sympathetic expression.

“Why’d you decide to come here?” Sam asks, gesturing vaguely at the institution that they’re sitting in. Tom feels his defenses relax as he listens to Sam speak.

“The crash,” he says, quietly. “I never knew how bad it is, to burn.” He lifts his arms and rests them on the table, showing them burn scars. “I thought I was in hell. I was… seeing things.”

“Like what?” Sam prompts.

Tom shakes his head. He doesn’t want to admit it.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Tom. It’s okay. I don’t think you’re crazy.” His voice is so kind, so gentle, that both Tom and Dean soften as they listen to it. Dean has never heard it, knows damn well Sam didn’t pick it up from home. He wonders, wistful, when Sam has ever used such a gentle voice before. (He used to use it with Jess, when she was sick or sad or stressed about exams.)

Tom looks up, looks at Sam, and feels comforted. “Red eyes,” he admits. “One of the flight attendants had red eyes. Kind of moving, like they were on fire. She just walked right over to the emergency exit and opened it.”

“Is that possible?” Dean asks, and the spell seems to have broken. Tom glares at Dean.

“No,” Tom snaps. “Obviously.” He slouches in his seat. “Who the fuck are you guys, anyway?”

Dean smiles broadly. He’s been waiting the entire visit to make this joke. “We’re with Delta Airlines,” he says. “We want to offer you a thousand complimentary miles.”

They get kicked out.

That afternoon, two important things happen.

One: Chuck Dyman flies in a tiny aircraft with one colleague by the name of David beside him, for the first time since the crash two weeks prior. Seven minutes into the flight, when the plane has reached full altitude, David watches Chuck point the controls directly at the ground, and the last thing he sees are Chuck’s burning red eyes.

Two: Sam becomes a federal criminal. He and Dean pose as Homeland Security officers to get a look at the wreckage. The secretary at the front desk, wary of two Arab men in cheap suits, calls the cops. But the only clue they needed at the wreckage was plain: the smell of sulfur, yellowish residue dusting burnt parts and torn metal. The moment they discover this, they make a quick exit. So, this time around, no warrant goes out for their arrest.

“It’s gotta be some kind of possession,” Dean says, loosening his tie as they drive back. “Nothing else fucking stinks like that.”

“What, like, demons?” Sam asks. “Like the fucking Exorcist?”

Dean nods. “Your mother sucks cocks in hell.” He’s nervous. He’s never dealt with real possession without his father. He wishes, not for the first time, he could ask for advice.

His phone rings, and he hates himself for the half second of hope that it’s his father. But it’s Jerry, delivering news of Chuck’s plane crash.

“It’s picking off survivors,” Sam says immediately.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “It’s gotta be.” He’s flipping desperately through their father’s journal. There are many kinds of demonic possession, and he’s looking for confirmation of one, any one, anything to pretend he knows what he’s doing. Sam isn’t nervous, doesn’t even seem scared as he paces across the room.

“Picking off survivors in the air,” Sam ponders. Then something occurs to him. “Shit, Dean. The last one, she’s a flight attendant.”

Dean looks up. “You think she’ll be going back to work already?” he asks. 

“Chuck did,” Sam says. He grabs the phone. “I’ll call Jerry. You figure out how to kill this thing.”

The thing they’re looking for is a creature made of smokeless fire. In this world, it is invisible, and is most powerful when possessing a human being. Although there are few confirmed ways to kill it, it despises iron, salt, and certain pre-Islamic incantations, spoken in Arabic or Hebrew. If none of these are on hand, the host body must be beaten almost to death to expel the djinni.

John Winchester has hunted these things before. He’s well-known among hunters for chasing demons of every kind. He knows a demon killed his wife- the smell of burning sulfur is unmistakable- but he does not know it was a djinni. Not yet.

Dean finds what he’s looking for in the journal, and his heart sinks as he reads through the list of tools and talismans his father used to exorcise a flame-eyed demon. Here, now, Dean has nothing, not even his father, and this reality sinks in when Sam tells him that Amanda Eckhart is flying tonight for the first time since the crash.

Sam is buzzing with energy for the first time in a long while. Like Dean, he knows this is something much worse than a ghost or a monster in the woods. But it doesn’t scare him. Because deep in his bones, without quite knowing that he knows it, Sam knows that this case will open up questions he’s been straining to ask all his life. Questions about why he feels the way he does, foreign in every self he’s ever been.

The tragic thing is that he’s right. But those questions he wants so badly to ask have answers that neither Sam nor Dean nor John is ready to hear.

Amanda Eckhart’s flight leaves in six hours. Sam and Dean prepare.

The incantation is short, but it’s written phonetically in the journal next to the translation. Sam spends three painstaking hours researching the original incantation, mumbling and repeating after YouTube pronunciation guides and writing the words down in the original Arabic script to ensure that the translation and pronunciation is right. He reflects again on his mother’s language, and how dead to him it has always been, how strange it tastes in his mouth now. He says the word  _ bismillah,  _ trying to feel the kind of home in it that Dean does, and cannot.

Dean is searching out talismans. The most reliable charm to ward off djinn possession is not a charm at all; it’s animal teeth, preferably cat or fox, hanging around the neck. The occult shop in town is full of trash and plastic, and Dean cuts quite a figure when he walks in, big and dark and smelling like the cigarettes he smokes when he’s nervous. He can tell he’s scaring the girl behind the counter, her pale eyes watching him as he pokes around, so he leaves without buying anything. He shoplifts a few sticks of oudh incense, another ward against djinn. He also steals a copy of  _ Frankenstein _ that’s no bigger than his palm, just for the hell of it. He has more luck when he seeks out a taxidermy shop, and he leaves with two little cat jaws clinking against each other in his pocket.

When they finally pile into the car on their way to the airport, they’re armed: an iron chain around Sam’s neck that could pass for jewelry, cat teeth tied clumsily onto two thin leather strings, Ziploc baggies full of rock salt and incense in their pockets, Sam reciting the incantation under his breath to be sure that he knows it by heart.

The airport is small, only one terminal, and there’s only one flight leaving at nine tonight. It’s easy enough to pick up the airport phone and page Amanda Eckhart, Delta flight 295. She sounds harried when she picks up.

“Is this Amanda Eckhart?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Amanda says, checking her watch. “Who’s this?”

“Concerned citizen,” Dean answers. “You dropped a credit card near the door. If you want to come get it, I’m near the big Dunkin ad outside security.”

“Shit.” Amanda sighs. She’ll have to go through security all over again. “Okay. I’ll be right there. Thanks so much.”

Sam is looking around surreptitiously. “Think we’ll be able to make a run for it when we’re done?” he asks. “Not too many people around.”

“We better,” Dean says, shaking his head. “I’m not getting arrested twice in one month.”

Amanda is hurrying back through the airport in her heels, eyes flickering to her watch. There’s still an hour until the plane takes off, and when she sees two men standing awkwardly by the Dunkin ad, she breathes a sigh of relief. 

“Hi,” she says. “Thank you so much for calling me, a lot of people wouldn’t have.”

Dean is digging through his pockets, pretending to look for her card, and quietly, Sam begins to murmur the incantation.

“Sorry, what?” Amanda asks, slightly unnerved. She can’t hear what the man is saying, but they still haven’t given her her card back. She glances around. No one is watching them.

Sam keeps going, slightly louder now. Amanda takes one step back as she makes it out as a foreign language. It occurs to her suddenly that these men have no bags, and one looks distinctly non-American.

“I’m going to leave,” she says, hating the way her voice shakes, and she turns on her heel to hurry away. She feels a little spray of something- sand, maybe- hit the back of her neck and slip down her jacket, and she whirls around to stare at them disbelievingly. They're both staring at her with wide eyes.

“What the fuck?” Amanda says. “What was- did you just throw something at me?” Dean did, in fact, just throw rock salt at her, and watched it bounce off her skin harmlessly.

“Dude,” Dean says. “It’s not her.”

“What’s not me?” Amanda knows her voice is going high and scared, but she can’t help it. “How the fuck did you know my name?”

Something terrible is occurring to Sam. “Dean,” he says, slowly. “It’s going to be somebody else. On the plane.”

“But there’s gotta be a hundred people at least...” Dean trails off. “Shit.”

This proves to be too much for Amanda. If she weren’t wearing heels, she’d run.

Sam rounds on Dean. “We have to buy tickets,” he says. “We have to get on the plane and take the demon down from inside of it.”

Dean blinks. “What, are you joking? There’s a reason we drive everywhere.”

“Yeah, because you two both have multiple warrants out?” Sam is already checking through his wallet, looking for a credit card they haven’t used much lately.

“Well, yeah.” Dean hesitates. “But also, I can’t fly, man. You and Dad could do this, maybe, you could pass for Greek or something. But next to me? We’ll have security on our asses before we go three feet.”

“I could do it alone,” Sam offers. He’s always known that Dean tends to be singled out far more often by authority figures, no matter which kind: cops, teachers, security guards. But he hasn’t seen his brother since August of 2001, and he feels absurdly naive for not taking it into account.

“Hell no,” Dean says immediately. The idea of Sam being trapped alone with a demon thirty thousand feet up is somehow worse to him than the thought of being arrested by Homeland Security. “Okay. Whatever. It’s all right. We’ll just keep our heads down and be careful. Yeah?”

“All right,” Sam says after a moment. He watches Dean fix his expression as they go to buy tickets to flight 295, steel himself in a way that he thinks Sam doesn’t notice. Sam makes them throw away the bags of rock salt before they go through security. He has no idea if it’s technically allowed or not, but they don’t have a minute to waste.

Predictably, the TSA cops bother them, scrutinizing them and frisking them and going through their phones, but there’s nothing incriminating there. Easing the difficult process is the fact that the agents have an almost instinctive trust in Sam, as everyone does, and as with everyone, this trust is partly supernatural in nature and partly due to Sam’s pale-skinned face.

They just barely make it through security on time, and they’re boarding the plane with only a few minutes to spare. Neither of them miss the way Amanda’s eyes widen as she sees them file on. Out of habit, Dean thinks  _ bismillah.  _ He’s wise enough not to say it aloud.

“Think she’s gonna call the cops?” Sam says quietly.

“She might,” Dean mutters back. He feels the cat tooth on its leather strip pressed against his chest under his shirt, clinking against his necklace. “Would suck for us, but at least the plane wouldn’t fly.”

She doesn’t call the cops, and the plane lifts off.

“Okay,” murmurs Sam. “We’ve got maybe ten, fifteen minutes before we reach full altitude. We have to find the thing before then.”

“Burning eyes, hates salt and iron,” Dean ticks off. 

“Sulfur smell,” Sam adds, but Dean shakes his head.

“Residue only appears when it’s in its plain form, before or after possession,” Dean says. “Unless it hasn’t possessed anybody yet, we won’t be able to smell it.” Sam is reminded that while he was in school, Dean was doing this full time.

“Great.” Sam rubs his forehead, staring straight ahead. “And we only see the burning eyes when it chooses to reveal them or when it loses control.”

“Yep.”

“Great.”

They toss a few stupid ideas back and forth (“We can’t just yell the exorcism, it’s in Arabic, we’ll get tackled in four seconds flat.” “Well, your idea was dumb too! How the fuck would we get everyone in here to touch this one iron chain?”), but they’re getting increasingly jumpy as the minutes tick by, and they make no progress.

Funnily enough, it’s one white woman’s racism that saves them.

In the front of the plane, Amanda is torn. The two men who frightened her earlier are bickering quietly in their seats, and although she can’t make out what they’re saying, she decides that they’re better off safe than sorry. She calls into the pilots’ cabin, and the door opens so that one pilot can stick his head out.

Immediately, the overwhelming stench of rotten eggs pours from the cabin.

“Sorry,” the pilot says. “Gas. Had some really shitty Taco Bell before we took off.”

Amanda bites back her disgust. “Um, I just wanted to let you know, there’s these two, um, freaky-looking guys on the plane. They harassed me before we boarded. I heard them speaking Arabic,” she adds.

“It’s gotta be in the cabin, right?” Sam asks, peering over the tops of the seats to look at where Amanda is talking indistinctly to the pilot. “You smell that?”

“Great,” Dean says, careful to keep his voice low. “Hijacking a plane. Fucking awesome.” He is, truthfully, more scared than he has been in years, and trying very hard not to show it. He’s only halfway succeeding.

“Which one do you think it is?” Sam asks, craning his neck. “One who’s talking to her?”

“I got no idea, dude, you’re the one looking.”

“We only have a few minutes left, man,” Sam says, looking up at the still-lit up seatbelt sign. “It’s gotta be the pilot who has the most control over the plane. How do we get him alone?”

The answer rises too easily to Dean’s tongue, and it sits there bitterly for a moment. “I have a plan,” he says finally.

Sam doesn’t want to agree to the plan that Dean sets forth. But they’re already eight minutes into the flight, and the demon, as they argue, is preparing to aim the plane directly into the earth.

Dean gets to his feet and starts moving towards the back of the plane. Amanda knocks on the cabin door again and asks one of the pilots to help her detain him.

“I got this,” says the Taco Bell pilot. “Go on, Bert, be a hero.”

Bert, quite thrilled at this idea, stands up and follows Amanda to the back of the plane, where Dean is crouched and digging through the snack carts. 

They’re twenty eight thousand feet up now, and rising fast.

“Excuse me, sir,” Bert says.

“Oh, hey, man,” Dean says. “I’m looking for these chips, I remember I had them in a movie theater forever ago, you think you could help me out looking for them?”

Bert, in surprise, just looks at him for a moment. He’s already convinced himself that Dean, with his brown skin and strong nose, is an incredibly dangerous threat, and it’s difficult to reconcile that with such an inane request.

“You should go back to your seat,” Amanda says. She’s still hanging back, scared. Dean gets to his feet. He’s taken some salt packets and torn them open, and now, when he stumbles forward into Bert, he spills the salt all over both of them. The grains bounce off of Bert’s hand without even a sizzle.

“Aw, fuck, sorry,” Dean says loudly. The signal.

Sam slinks from his seat and starts making his way towards the front of the plane. Nobody notices him, preoccupied as they are with the miniature drama happening in the back galley. 

A few things happen in very quick succession: Sam closes the door to the cabin behind him, Amanda notices that Sam is not in his seat, and the demon plunges the plane into a deep dive.

“Terrorist!” Amanda screams, and somehow, of all the screaming happening as oxygen masks drop from the ceilings, this is the one that’s heard. Bert turns to see that the cabin door, which he had left open, is now closed.

The plane descends into chaos. Children are crying, people are trying to call their spouses and parents despite there being no service, and the plane jerks wildly, provoking a fresh set of shrieking every time it does. The three other flight attendants are trying desperately to keep people calm, and Bert and Dean trip over each other trying to get to the cabin.

“Sam!” Dean shouts, hammering on the cabin door with his fist. He can hear banging and yelling inside, and he knows some kind of scuffle is happening but he can’t get the door open. Bert grabs Dean, trying to restrain him. Amanda starts to cry.

Inside the cabin, Sam and the possessed Taco Bell pilot are wrestling. The demon, of course, has unnatural strength, and the only thing that saves Sam from getting his skull cracked open against the floor immediately is that the pilot’s hand touches the iron chain around Sam’s neck. The demon howls in pain and falls back. Sam scrambles to get the chain from around his neck and use it to restrain the demon, but the demon is too fast and lunges for him again.

“Stop!” yells Sam, throwing his hands up. It’s pure instinct, but the demon does, in fact, stop.

Now, before you get excited, Sam has not actually compelled the demon to stop in its tracks. He is not even a fraction that powerful, not yet. But the demon  _ feels  _ an urge to stop, and this is so shocking to it that it stutters for a half-second.

In this fatal half-second, the door to the cabin bursts open. The demon’s hesitation lets Dean snatch the chain and loop it twice around the pilot’s wrists. The demon screams. Bert looks horrified, but upon seeing that nobody is at the control panel, throws himself into the pilot’s seat and begins stabilizing the plane.

Sam begins shouting the incantation, and with the door open, every single passenger hears him yell hoarsely in Arabic. A chorus of screaming rises, and Sam has to shout louder to be heard. The pilot is screaming and writhing unnaturally, his eyes burning red. Amanda watches in horror from the doorway, paralyzed in fear as tears stream down her face.

“Sam!” Dean bellows. “Fucking hurry!”

He almost stumbles, but he keeps going strong. As the last word leaves his mouth, the pilot bursts into flames. Dean scrambles back, his eyes wide, and Amanda lets out a piercing scream.

Then the flames dissipate, leaving the pilot limp on the floor and completely unharmed. Amanda claps a hand over her mouth, and the three of them stand there stock still, staring down at the pilot. The plane has stabilized. Dean leans forward and pokes the pilot’s shoulder.

“What happened?” yells Bert.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” Amanda asks, tremblingly.

“He should be fine,” Dean says unsurely. He shoves the pilot harder.

The pilot opens his eyes. He closes and then opens his shaking fists. His body was only taken from him for ten minutes, but he feels so sick and evil that he rolls over and throws up on the floor.

“Thank you,” he’s gasping. “Oh, God, thank you.”

Dean and Sam look up, realizing that the entire plane is watching them. Some of them are still wearing oxygen masks, which makes Dean laugh.

There is a great amount of confusion over the fact that Dean and Sam head right back to their seats instead of continuing to hijack the plane. Bert turns the plane around and touches down, thinking that he needs to call Homeland Security and the TSA and the FBI and about a hundred other agencies. The airport staff brings out a set of steps to the plane, believing wrongly that the passengers mean to disembark. In the confusion, Sam and Dean jump up, sprint across the plane, out the door, and down the steps. They jump over the last few steps, and land heavily on the tarmac. They get slightly lost, running around the airstrip avoiding the searchlights, but when they finally find the car and peel off down the road, Dean lets out a whoop and throws the middle finger up out his window, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

“Holy shit,” Sam says, laughing despite himself. “Thank fucking Christ for incompetent security.”

Dean laughs, loud and cheerful. “You can say that shit again.”

Sam wipes the prints off of the credit card they’d used to pay for their tickets and drops it out the window. They drive back to the motel, throw all their things in the trunk, and then keep driving, ninety miles an hour, all the windows down and music blasting. They’re elated, the both of them, euphoric at their success and their narrow escape.

This is a good note to end a case on. A joyful one. It’s the first moment that Sam has felt truly joyful since Jess died. In a few minutes, this will occur to him, and he’ll turn the music down and tell Dean to take it easy and this screaming adolescent exhilaration will fade. Sam will think about how that demon froze for just one heartbeat when he yelled at it, flickering red eyes wide with shock as Dean barreled towards it. When he thinks of telling Dean this, it won’t even make it to his tongue. It will lodge itself in its stomach, heavy as the other secret sitting there, making Sam feel alien and wrong.

But I will stop before that happens, because I did promise you moments of joy. So right now, they’re burning rubber down the highway in the middle of the night, singing along to ancient cassette tapes and thumping the beat into the dashboard, triumphant.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for brief discussion of suicide, brief and nongraphic mention of child abuse

In the summer of 1988, almost five years after the house fire that killed Maryam Winchester ( née Yakoub), John Winchester returned to Lawrence, Kansas. His young sons were still Florida-tan and giggling, tossing fat, sweet oranges at each other in the backseat. John would be happy to never see a damn orange again, after spending six months working in a grove to keep food on the table. Still, he didn’t regret it. He was coming to understand the world he’d forced his way into. Even as they drove, whispers were making their way up the Eastern Seaboard about a dead demon in central Florida, and the man who had killed it.

“Boys,” John said, his voice flat and stern. “Quiet, or you’ll be running alongside the car for the last mile.”

It was a credible threat. Dean fell quiet immediately. Sam, only five years old and with no concept of how far a mile was, was less obedient, but John knew he wouldn’t have to say anything. He watched as Dean whispered harshly into Sam’s ear, making Sam’s eyes go wide. John couldn’t hear him, but Dean was saying this: “If I get spanked because you can’t shut up, I’m stealing Dad’s belt and using it on you.” This was a less credible threat, but it worked. The last few miles to Lawrence was, blissfully, quiet.

John returned often to Lawrence. Less so lately, it was true, and he had sold the house two years prior, but it was still home base to him. To his children, it was familiar, but no more than that, and this was no more than another road trip.

They didn’t know the purpose of this particular trip, but that was usual. John had them on a strictly need-to-know basis, which would continue until his death eighteen years later. He always had little plans, ideas, errands that would keep him out of the house for hours at a time. He had a lot on his mind on this trip, and many things he needed to take care of in Lawrence, but we needn’t worry ourselves with those. The purpose of this digression is one conversation between a young Sam Winchester and an old friend of John’s by the name of Missouri Moseley.

Missouri Moseley is, strictly speaking, a witch. She calls herself a psychic, and so does everyone else despite it being technically untrue. But it is, after all, only a technicality, and for all intents and purposes, Missouri was at the time the most powerful clairvoyant in the state. So when John dropped Dean and Sam at Missouri’s that balmy night in 1988, Dean leaned down to Sam and whispered, “She’s a psychic.”

“It says puh-sy-chik,” Sam said, staring at the sign outside her door. He had asked Dean to teach him to read last year. Dean had obliged him, and Sam had fallen in love with the written word immediately.

“That’s how you spell psychic,” Dean said.

“That’s stupid,” Sam said. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed.

Dean and Sam were alien in the Moseley household. They were scruffy, filthy-mouthed kids, prone to roughhousing and oblivious to general standards of cleanliness. The Moseleys, by contrast, were a sweet, quiet family, a mom and a dad and a baby, with a picket fence out front. They even said grace before every meal.

But if there was anything their upbringing had so far impressed on Sam and Dean, it was obedience. So they were lovely little houseguests, and Missouri found herself charmed by them despite her exasperation with their father.

Late that night, the baby began to cry. Missouri opened her eyes, and felt her husband shift beside her. She knew he was pretending to be asleep, but he had, to be fair, put the baby to sleep for the last two nights. With a sigh, Missouri hauled herself to her feet and made her way to the nursery.

“Hush, baby,” she murmured. “Mama’s here, baby, it’s all right. Shh.” She bounced the baby gently, turning in place. She almost jumped when she saw Sam’s skinny little frame silhouetted in the doorway. This in itself should have alerted her that there was something strange about this child- Missouri was rarely startled- but she was still fuggy with sleep, and it didn’t register.

“I didn’t hear you get up,” Missouri said. “You all right, honey?”

“Is he okay?” Sam asked, eyes fixed on the child. You would think he’d never seen a baby up close before. He hadn’t, really.

“Just a little fussy,” Missouri said, smiling. “Like clockwork, he wakes up the whole house ‘round one in the morning.”

Sam considered that. “Are you really magic?”

“Magic?” Missouri asked, laughing softly. “Now, who told you that?” 

“Dean,” Sam said, a little embarrassed. 

“Ain’t no living human in this world that’s truly magic,” Missouri said. As far as she knows, and in fact as far as most people know, this is perfectly true. “But you can reach out and touch magic, if you got the right tools and you know what you’re doing. You can even ask it real nice to do what you want it to. That’s all I do, honey. I just do it the best.”

She’d had a conversation just like this one with John in 1983. She hadn’t thought he understood her, his eyes red-rimmed with grief, his face hollow and unshaved, his breath hot and stinking with liquor. 

But he had understood her, and now here was Sam, with that curiously solemn look on his young face, understanding her just as well.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Good night, miss Missouri.” He hesitated, and then stood on his tiptoes so that he could see the baby’s peaceful face in his blue blanket. “Good night, baby James.”

“Good night, honey,” Missouri said.

Then Sam turned and went back to the fold-out couch he was sharing with Dean, and fell dreamlessly to sleep.

This memory lay buried for seventeen years. The lesson didn’t; it was part of John’s training, that only inhuman things  _ had _ magic, and human witches only  _ used  _ it. But it wasn’t until after Jess’s death that Sam remembered the words in Missouri’s soft, kind voice:  _ Ain’t no living human in this world that’s truly magic. _

Which means, as their father took such care to teach them, everything that is truly magic is either dead or a monster.

Sam wakes this morning with a pounding headache. He dreamed badly last night. A child he doesn’t know, being beaten by a faceless man. (It’s the man at the desk of the motel they’ve been staying at for the past two weeks. The dream will come true in two days’ time.) 

Dean is already awake. He’s whistling, which is at least better than him singing, and rustling through several newspapers in search of a case. Seeing Sam grumble out of bed, he smiles and tosses him a breakfast sandwich.

“Morning, Sammy,” Dean says. Sam is in too sour a mood to reciprocate the cheer, and the foil-wrapped sandwich falls with a flat thump to the bedsheets. Dean looks at the sandwich for a moment, and Sam thinks he’s going to make some wisecrack, but he doesn’t. He just goes back to the newspapers and his own coffee cup.

Sam realizes Dean thinks that he’s upset because he dreamed of Jess. It’s not like that doesn’t happen- it does, and Dean can usually guess when to give him space. But the fact that Dean is wrong this time, the fact that Sam  _ wasn’t  _ thinking of Jess, it makes fresh waves of grief and guilt hit him all over again.

It’s setting up to be a shitty day.

In the parking lot, Sam steals gas as Dean shields him from view with a spread out newspaper. 

“Oh, this one’s fucked up,” Dean says, laughing. “They found a dead bear out in the woods, with a dead guy stuffed inside.”

“Think it’s a case?” Sam asks.

“It’s not.” He says this dismissively. “The wife said he was a real survivalist type, like, he always wanted to try surviving a winter night in the woods by sleeping in a deer stomach or something.” Dean has always had a distant sort of contempt for survivalist types, considers it a waste that people with wives and houses and jobs enjoy tramping through the woods for no discernible reason. “But that’s fucking nasty, right?” he adds.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He listens to the fuel patter into the gas can.

“Like, uh, what do they call it? Turducken?”

“Gross, Dean.”

Dean laughs and turns the page. The can fills up, and Sam tugs the rubber tube from the now-empty gas tank. He turns to fill up the Impala’s tank.

“This might be something,” Dean says, serious now. “Guy found in his own home with his eyes exploded.”

“Exploded,” Sam repeats.

“Like water balloons,” Dean affirms. “They’re saying it’s a stroke, but the guy was thirty nine.”

“Let’s check it out,” Sam says. The gas tank is full. “Where is it?”

“Toledo, Ohio,” Dean says, folding the newspaper. “Let’s go.”

Sam dozes fitfully in the car. Dean knows he didn’t sleep well, so he lets him. Part of it, too, is that Dean still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with his brother’s grief. He thinks often that maybe they should never have left Palo Alto, should never have brought all this grief spilling onto the road. But he doesn’t know what he’d do, where he’d be searching for their father alone, and Sam, despite his refusal to speak of the man, is single mindedly focused on finding him.

So maybe it’s a little selfish, that Dean never suggests taking Sam back to California. Maybe he’s waxing nostalgic for a childhood that was ruled by violence and discipline, because at least he didn’t feel so alone all the time. 

They reach Toledo in the afternoon. Dean doesn’t even have to wake Sam up as they come to a stop in front of the building. Sam startles awake, still tired.

“Are we there?” Sam says, disoriented. “Did we get there?” He was forever asking this question when they were children, and it took him until high school to realize that there was no  _ there  _ to get to.

“Yeah,” Dean says, his voice bleeding concern. “Look, man, I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but-”

“Yeah,” Sam says flatly. “I don’t.” He knows, logically, that Dean is only referring to Jess’s death. A car crash. A normal, tragic accident. Nobody’s fault. But the accident has become so inextricably tied with everything that Sam is holding desperately close, his hands folded over his guts like they’ll fall out in a mess of blood and viscera if he doesn’t, that he can’t speak about any of it. 

Dean regards him for another moment and lets it go.

Inside, the morgue technician doesn’t want to let them in to see the body. They bicker with him for a minute, and Dean is seriously starting to entertain the thought of hitting him before Sam puts fifty bucks on the desk.

“Right this way,” the morgue technician says, a close-lipped smile smoothing his face immediately.

“That’s my money, dude,” Dean hisses as he trails after Sam into the morgue. “I  _ earned  _ it.”

“You won it in a poker game,” Sam whispers back.

“Yeah,” Dean says indignantly. 

Sam is opening his mouth to tell Dean that doesn’t count as  _ earning  _ when the morgue technician reveals the victim’s face, and both Sam and Dean recoil. The man’s entire face is misshapen and purpled, but there are no cuts, only the shattered bloody eye sockets. It’s disgusting.

“A stroke did that?” Dean asks, disbelieving. “What, did every blood vessel in his entire head pop?”

“Doctor’s gonna get it submitted as a case study,” the morgue technician says. “Freakiest stroke he’s ever seen.”

“A case study?” Sam asks. “Did his body get donated to science or something?”

“Wouldn’t that have been nice,” Dean mutters. “Wouldn’t have had to shell out fifty bucks-”

“No,” the morgue tech says, loudly. “He’s going to the wake tomorrow to talk to the guy’s kids, get permission. Real dick move, you ask me, but hey. I’m just a technician.”

They leave with this lead, Dean still grumbling about his lost poker winnings. It probably takes them a little longer to prepare for the wake than strictly necessary, but the last wake they attended was Jess’s, and neither have the clothes for it. Sam’s picked out the only black pair of jeans they have between them, but they’re ripped in the knees and just a little too tight on Sam. Dean, despite the fact that he has absolutely no leg to stand on with his seven dollar outfit from Salvation Army, can’t stop laughing.

“Dude, you look ridiculous.”

“At least I tried. You haven’t washed that coat in literally years.”

Dean scoffs. He actually does wash this coat. If there’s any of his belongings he takes great care of, it’s his car, his gun, and his coat, all hand-me-downs from his father. 

So they arrive at the wake in jeans. They loiter by the food table, eating and eavesdropping on the hushed conversation for intel. It’s taken Sam this long to get comfortable with taking advantage of free food again, but he does so easily now. It makes him remember how Dean had kept the two of them fed more often than not on free food tables at events they weren’t exactly invited to. He wonders when he’d forgotten about that.

“Is that the daughter, you think?” Dean says quietly to Sam. He’s looking at a girl on the other side of the room. Her dark skinned face is drawn with exhaustion, but she’s jittering, fidgeting with her braids and shifting her weight between her feet incessantly.

“I think so,” Sam replies. “Right age.”

Donna Shoemaker turned eighteen three weeks ago. It’s her first semester of school at the public university in Toledo, and she works part time at a grocery store. For the last few days, her head has been spinning with mortgage payments, life insurance, funeral costs, the endless bureaucratic grieving that she is almost completely unsure of how to handle. A Dr. Feiklowicz has been buzzing after her all afternoon, asking about her father’s body, of all things.

“Look, I don’t know what’s happening to his body,” Donna finally bursts out. It’s too loud, and she glances around to be sure that Lily didn’t hear her. Lily’s nowhere to be seen, and Donna turns her glare back to the doctor. “We’re going to bury him, I guess. Or cremate. I don’t know yet.”

“I wanted to ask if you would consider donating your father to science,” Dr. Feiklowicz says. 

“To- what?” Donna shakes her head. “Can I- who are you, again?”

“I’m a doctor from the-”

“Hey, sorry, ‘scuse me.” A young man, broader and taller than the doctor, shoulders his way into the conversation. “Just wanted to say, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Donna says, relief flooding her. “I appreciate that. Um, how did you know my father?”

“We can pick this up later,” the doctor says, but they’ve already left him behind.

“I, uh.” Dean glances out the window and sees the car in the driveway. “I work at the auto shop. Worked on his car a few times, really good guy.”

“Thanks for getting me away from that,” Donna says after a moment. “He kept bugging me about the body.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I guess it’s pretty weird, this happening to such a young guy.”

“Yeah,” Donna says, sighing. “God. I mean, it was insane. There wasn’t even any symptoms. I Googled it. He never complained about headaches, even.”

“I heard the doctor wants to do a case study on it,” Dean says.

“Do they pay the families to do that?” Donna asks, interest piqued.

Dean looks surprised, and Donna immediately feels terrible.

“Not that- I don’t know,” she backpedals. “Just, um, you know, funerals are expensive, you know?”

Dean softens. He recognizes the fear in her eyes, how hungry it is. “Yeah,” he says. “You got a sister, don’t you? Can she help?”

Donna thinks of Lily, poor, strange little Lily, whose teachers always call home complaining about odd behavior, who has always seemed a little apart from this world and its minutiae. “No,” she says. “She’s eleven.”

Dean remembers Sam at eleven. He hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, and he seemed out of place whether he was at school or at home, all wide dark eyes and too-big clothes. “It’s just you two?”

“Just us,” Donna affirms. She feels like she wants to cry, suddenly, and she forces a smile instead. Dean knows that smile. He has worn it for Sam a hundred times.

Upstairs, Lily sits alone in the bathroom on the edge of the bathtub, staring into the mirror. The blood has been cleaned off the tile (Donna scrubbed the floor for an hour, blood getting under her nails and staining the knees of her Goodwill jeans, sobs choking in her throat so Lily wouldn’t hear), but Lily is more focused on the mirror. She watches it intently, watching for any flicker of movement that shouldn’t be there. She sits stock still, has been sitting there for the better part of forty five minutes as her harried sister keeps the wake running smoothly downstairs.

Something moves in the mirror, and Lily leans forward, but it turns out that the movement is a tall man with dark eyes, coming up the stairs.

“Oh, sorry,” Sam says, stopping at the doorway. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

Lily looks up at him, wordless. Sam looks down at her.

“Do you live here?” Sam says, softer now. 

Lily nods. Sam stoops to sit next to her, and together they watch the mirror. “What’s your name?” Sam asks.

“Lily.” Her voice is thin, and seems far too young for even an eleven year old.

“I’m Sam.”

They watch the mirror for a little while longer. Lily doesn’t feel afraid, and in fact is very glad that Sam hasn’t offered empty condolences.

“What are we waiting for?” Sam asks finally.

Lily glances at Sam. She leans close, making sure to speak quietly. “Bloody Mary,” she says. “She killed my dad.”

Sam nods slowly, and Lily turns back to the mirror.

They sit quietly, grown man and girl child, each with a secret pressing heavy down on them.

Dean and Sam have, by now, gotten all the information relevant to the case, and should probably leave and start doing their research. But they stay anyway. Dean lets Donna pour her heart out to him in the kitchen, lets her cry about her baby sister and bills and grocery money and needing a second job. Sam sits quietly with Lily, and they speak barely twenty words to one another, but they understand each other nonetheless. When it’s finally time to leave, Dean, on impulse, gives Donna his cell number, telling her that he can’t offer her a job, but to call if she needs anything else.

“So,” Dean says as they get in the car to go. “That was fucking depressing.”

“You’re telling me,” Sam says tiredly. “Christ, those poor kids.”

“Anything?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says. His eyes flicker to the passenger side mirror. “Lily thinks it was Bloody Mary.”

“The mirror story,” Dean says.

“That’s the one.” Sam leans back in his seat, rubbing his tired eyes. “It’s consistent with the story. Steven died in front of a mirror, eyes scratched out.”

“You think he was playing a middle school game?” Dean says skeptically. “I mean, hell, what about every thirteen year old across the country who  _ is  _ playing a middle school game? Why aren’t they turning up with boiled heads?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, shrugging. “But it’s worth checking out, right? She seemed really sure. This kid, man, she was just sitting in front of the mirror watching it like she was sure Bloo-” Sam stops, glancing at the rearview. “Like she was sure she was going to see something.”

“Worth a shot,” Dean says, shrugging. “Donna said the dad was healthy, no reason he would’ve had a stroke. Check the map, let’s find a library.”

They spend several hours in the library searching for dead women named Mary in Toledo, but nothing they turn up seems to have any relevance to the myth. When it gets dark, Dean calls it.

“I’m tired, I’m hungry, and we need to make back yesterday’s fifty bucks,” he says.

“I’m not gonna stand around while you scam people,” Sam says. He’s exhausted. He’s been exhausted a lot lately. “I’m going to bed. Take the car if you want, I’ll save you some pizza.”

“Come on,” Dean says, but it’s halfhearted. “Let’s just go forget about all this shit for a while, huh? Drinks on me.”

“Drinks can’t be on you,” Sam says, snappish. “All our money is a couple hundred cash and stolen credit cards.”

It’s not their usual brotherly ribbing, and they’re both aware of it.

Dean doesn’t want to fight. So he leaves Sam at the motel to order pizza and watch TV. Dean pulls up at the first dive bar he sees. He hustles some pool, drinks a little too much, fucks a girl he doesn’t know in the bathroom. Sam sits in the motel room, angry without knowing why, lonely and pissy and thinking about the secret like he’s pressing on a bruise.

The Shoemaker sisters are straining, too. Lily spends all day and all evening sitting in the bathroom, vigilant against Bloody Mary and determined not to let anyone else that she loves die, but she refuses to breathe a word of what she knows to Donna. Donna, exhausted from the wake, from cleaning the house and doing her homework and looking for jobs and making dinner that Lily refuses to eat, finally breaks down and yells.

“I need you to just be normal for a few days, okay?” she shouts. 

Lily knows that she isn’t what she’s supposed to be, but she doesn’t know how to be any different. “Can I eat it in here?” she asks. It’s an olive branch, an attempt to make Donna’s life easier.

“No,” Donna says. Then she goes to her bedroom and closes the door behind her so that Lily won’t hear her cry.

The case, it seems, has stalled. There are no leads, no new deaths, and research is revealing nothing useful.

Then, days later as they’re sitting down for lunch at a diner, Dean’s phone rings. This is a rare enough occasion on its own, but it’s also not a number Dean recognizes. He picks up, making eye contact with Sam across the table.

“Hello?”

“Dean?”

“Donna,” Dean says. Sam’s brow furrows in surprise. “Hey. How you holding up?”

“Um,” Donna says. “Fine, I guess. I just- I’m sorry, this is weird.”

“No, no,” Dean says quickly. Sam leans forward, and Dean angles the phone so that Sam can hear better. “What’s up? Did something happen?”

“No,” Donna says. “Uh, I just wanted to know. You said if I needed anything, I could call.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean says, bewildered now. “What is it?”

“Can you babysit Lily?” Donna says, all in a rush. “I wouldn’t ask, but I have a double shift on Friday, and I can’t pick her up from school. I tried calling her friends’ parents, but none of them can take her.” She doesn’t mention that Lily really only has one friend. “I can’t afford a babysitter, and I don’t feel good leaving her alone all night. She’s a little, well.” Donna hesitates. She feels horribly embarrassed, knowing she’s already spilled far too much to a relative stranger, but she forges on anyway. “I need someone to make sure she eats, you know? If you can’t, it’s fine. Don’t even worry about it, actually, I’ll just-”

“Yeah,” Dean interrupts. “Yeah, Donna, it’s fine. We can watch her.”

So this is how Sam and Dean end up at the Shoemaker house on a Friday, Lily and her backpack in tow. Over a week has passed since they found any new information on the case, and they don’t expect to find anything here. Donna calls Dean on her fifteen minute break, anxious about Lily and her eating habits.

“Make sure she eats,” Donna says. She’s smoking a cigarette, even though her father made her quit last year. “She’s really picky, but she’ll for sure eat macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. She’ll only eat chicken nuggets if you take off the breadcrumbs on the outside. She likes applesauce, but not apples.”

“Okay,” Dean says, watching Lily drop her bag on the floor and head directly upstairs.

“She spends a lot of time in the upstairs bathroom,” Donna says, controlling her voice carefully. “It’s fine, as long as she eats.”

Dean exchanges a glance with Sam, and Sam nods once before following Lily upstairs.

“Don’t worry,” Dean tells Donna. “She’s fine, okay? Don’t stress too much. And put out that cigarette, I can hear you smoking it. I’ll see you tonight.”

Donna puts out her cigarette.

Lily is sitting in the upstairs bathroom, staring into the mirror. She barely flinches when Sam comes inside and sits down next to her.

“Hey, Lily,” Sam says. He follows her gaze to the mirror. “Still waiting for you-know-who?”

Lily nods.

Sam nods slowly. “Why are you so sure she’s around?” he asks.

Lily hesitates. She has imagined a thousand times how Donna might look at her if she told the truth, and she doesn’t think that Sam would think her less of a monster than Donna would.

“I saw her,” she says finally. This is true, but it is also not the most important part of the truth. But Sam understands anyway.

“Did your dad call her?” he asks gently.

Lily, after a long moment, says, “I can’t tell you.” She wonders, almost in disbelief, if Sam has sussed out her secret. Then she reconsiders. He couldn’t possibly. If he did, he wouldn’t be looking at her with such tenderness right now.

They sit together for a while, watching the mirror.

Finally, Dean comes upstairs. He’s been doing the cleaning that poor Donna hasn’t had the time for. He’s never cleaned such a big house before, only trailers and motel rooms and crappy apartments, but it’s the same principle. When he finds Sam and Lily sitting silently in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, his first thought is that Sam has officially lost it.

Then Sam gets up and pulls him aside, outside the bathroom.

“She’s still watching for. You know,” Sam whispers. “Take her downstairs to eat. I think she called the ghost. Or whatever the hell this is. She knows what’s going on, somehow.”

“What, like she said it three times in the mirror?” Dean asks. “Why didn’t the ghost get her, then?”

“I’m gonna look around,” Sam says. “Make her dinner. I’ll call you if I see anything.”

“All right.”

When Sam asks Lily to go downstairs with Dean for dinner, her first instinct is to refuse. But she thinks of how long Sam spent sitting next to her, believing her, and she decides that Sam will be perfectly capable of defending against Bloody Mary in the meantime.

So Lily goes downstairs with Dean for macaroni and cheese. He chatters all the while, and although Lily has no interest in responding to him, she appreciates it anyway. In any case, he makes great macaroni and cheese.

Sam is checking every inch of the bathroom, and finding nothing. But this hunch won’t let go of him, and finally as a last resort, he takes the mirror fully off the wall and looks at the back.

The name LINDA SHOEMAKER is scrawled on it in what looks like dried blood.

Sam replaces the mirror, heart pounding. He sits back down on the edge of the tub, staring into the mirror, and calls Dean.

It’s decided that Sam needs to stay in the house with Lily, watching the bathroom mirror. Dean speeds to the library to research. The first result for LINDA SHOEMAKER is a ten year old obituary. Wife to Steven, mother to Donna and baby Lily, Linda overdosed on sleeping pills.

Dean assumes that Steven killed her. Steven himself did not believe that this was far from the truth. Often, he remembered his wife’s postpartum depression, how she would take baths and keep her head underwater for twenty, thirty, forty seconds, how she would gaze at the sleeping pills, how she would sometimes take twice the recommended dose and sleep for twenty hours straight. Steven did not kill his wife, but he did not prevent her suicide, and this secret weighed him down for ten years.

It doesn’t matter now.

Dean thinks that the Bloody Mary angle has been a red herring the entire time, that it’s the wife’s vengeful spirit who killed Steven, but then he reconsiders. Spirits usually take a couple decades to twist into murderous echoes of their living selves. Even if Linda’s ghost was utterly sane when she killed her husband, that would make her unfinished business quite complete, and it would be over. So, just to be sure, Dean does a broad search, nationwide instead of regional, for dead Marys in front of mirrors.

To his surprise, the search turns up a Mary Worthington in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Murdered in front of a mirror, eyes scratched out, unsolved after forty two years. Quickly, he scribbles down a few notes and then drives back to the Shoemaker house.

When Donna comes home several hours later, she’s exhausted. But when she finds the house clean and Lily sleeping peacefully, she almost cries with relief. When she walks into the kitchen to see a full dinner made, she actually throws her arms around Dean.

“Whoa,” Dean says, at once uncomfortable and unbelievably touched. He hugs her back hesitantly. “You all right, kiddo?”

“Yeah,” Donna says. She doesn’t want to move, her face pressed against his warm shoulder, but after another moment, she steps back. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Dean says sincerely.

Before they leave, Dean puts a fifty under a book on the kitchen table. He doesn’t know if Donna would accept it flat out, but he figures, this way, she’ll have to take it.

The next day, they drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana to investigate the Mary Worthington case. She was nineteen years old in 1963, an orphan and aspiring beauty queen. She would spend her evenings singing in bars and restaurants, and might have even been going somewhere if she hadn’t been gruesomely murdered. Her dying act was to reach out with one bloody hand and write the letters T-R-E on the mirror she had been murdered in front of, but she could not finish. Trevor Sampson was the prime and only suspect, but he was wealthy, connected. He escaped prosecution, his secret remained buried, and Mary’s murder went unsolved. Detective Barry Foster never quite got over it, and even now, old and white haired as he relates the story to Dean and Sam, his cataracted eyes are sad.

“What happened to her?” Dean asks. “Her body, her things, the mirror, afterwards?”

Foster shrugs. “She had no family,” he says. “She was cremated by the state. Her stuff, it all got put in storage.” He thinks for a moment. “But early this year all the storage in the precinct was emptied. The valuable stuff was auctioned. Guess they didn’t need forty year old evidence anymore.”

“Do you know what happened to the mirror?” Sam asks.

Foster shakes his head. “But I can give you a directory of establishments who attended the auctions,” he says.

On the list is an antique mirror store in Toledo, Ohio. Dean stands on the gas all the way back to the city.

“She’s gotta be stuck in the mirror, right?” Dean says. “Smash it, and we’re done.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He’s staring hard at the address of the store. “What do you think about the victim pattern?”

“There’s no victim pattern,” Dean points out. “Not yet, anyway. But, I mean, she got killed and nobody ever found out who did it. Shoemaker killed his wife and hid it. That’s gotta be it, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam says distantly. “Gotta be.”

“So we’ll sneak in tonight,” Dean says decisively. “I don’t know what the thing looks like, so we’ll just smash all of them. Yeah?”

“Dean,” Sam says quietly. “It might not work, if she isn’t there. She could manifest in any mirror.”

“Spirit’s linked to the mirror,” Dean reasons. “We could just burn the place down, that would do it.”

“Dean,” Sam says, louder now. Dean falls quiet, finally, and looks at his brother. “We need to make sure we destroy her. And I think the best way to do that is bait.”

“Bait,” Dean repeats. “What, just find somebody who killed someone and hid it? By tonight?”

Sam’s secret bruises. “She’ll come if I call her,” Sam says.

Dean’s entire body feels cold. If he wasn’t speeding down the highway, he’d turn fully in his seat to rebuke Sam. “No,” he says flatly. “Jesus fuck, Sam, I’m trying to be good about this, but I think we need to talk about it.”

Sam, crazily, wants to laugh at how earnest Dean looks right now. “About what?” he asks, keeping his voice placid.

“Jess wasn’t your fault,” Dean says. “All right? It was an accident. I get it if you need to blame something, or someone, I get that. Blame anybody. Blame everybody. Blame me, if you need to.” Dean glances over at Sam, utterly sincere. “Right? I’m the one who made you leave in the first place. Take a swing at me, if it makes you feel better. But Sam, there’s nothing you could’ve done. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“You don’t know that,” Sam says recklessly.

“What?”

“The victim pattern,” says Sam. “It’s people with a secret. You don’t know everything, Dean.” In a nasty kind of way, Sam relishes the shock plain on Dean’s face. He knows what Dean must be wondering, what horrible secret would call Mary to him. It brings him a splinter of satisfaction that Dean is finally going to be aware that there’s something really wrong between them, something really wrong with  _ Sam.  _ He waits to see Dean withdraw. He waits to see an expression of apathy or wariness or both come over Dean’s face, the expression that would come over John’s face if he were here to witness this.

It doesn’t come. Dean just keeps looking straight ahead with that stricken, sad look on his face. It’s like an open wound. Sam stares moodily out his own window. He presses the bruise.

Donna and Lily are doing better today. Lily’s friend has invited her for a slumber party tonight, and Lily actually seems excited for it. She only spent an hour in the bathroom today, and she has her bag packed hours before she’s supposed to be there. For the first time since Steven’s death, Donna is sure that everything is going to be okay. She buys Lily a big pack of candy, so that she can have something to bring to the slumber party, but Lily tears into the bag before they’re even ready to leave. Donna laughs and snags a Laffy Taffy for herself. God, she loves this kid. She loves this kid so damn much.

Before they leave, Donna hands Lily her cell phone. “Memorize my number,” she says. “If anything happens and you feel like leaving, just call, okay? Doesn’t matter what. Just call.”

Lily takes the phone. She memorizes her sister’s number. Then she goes through the contacts and memorizes Dean’s, too, thinking of Sam and all the hours he spent watching the mirror with her.

The slumber party is almost really nice. Lily’s never really been popular- she’s just a little too weird for that- but all the girls are sweet to her tonight. Her friend’s mother is doing whatever they ask, ordering pizza and giving them extra Coca-Cola. The first slumber party Lily’s ever been to. The other girls don’t even make fun of her for only eating the cheese and pepperoni off the pizza. It’s almost perfect.

The sugar-rowdy girls, at eight that night, decide to play Bloody Mary.

Instantly, Lily feels her secret press down on her stomach, and she feels like throwing up all the soda.

“I don’t want to,” she says. She’s too quiet. They don’t hear her in their gleeful girl-crowing, and they stampede past her to the bathroom.

She can hear giggling and whispering. She makes a split second decision.

Lily gets up and tiptoes to the landline in the hall. She’s halfway through dialing her sister’s number when she realizes that she will not be able to explain this. So instead, she dials Dean.

Dean and Sam are, at this moment, driving to the antique mirror shop. It’s on the outskirts of the city, almost a half hour drive, and they would not reach it before Lily dies.

“Hello?”

“Dean?” Lily says. “I need you to come get me.” He recognizes her small, quavering voice immediately. He brakes too hard.

“What the hell,” Sam says, reflexively irritable. Then he sees Dean’s face, the fear written on it, and he sits up. “What?”

“What’s wrong, kiddo?” Dean asks. He’s already pulling the car into a U turn. “Where are you?”

In the bathroom, the girls are chanting  _ Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. _

“I’m at Fiona’s house,” Lily says. “Can you- can you put Sam on the phone?”

Dean throws the phone at Sam. “Ask her where she is,” he says.

“Lily?” Sam says, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re playing it,” Lily whispers. “I’m scared.”

In the bathroom, the girls hold their breath, but nothing happens. They burst into giggles, all secretly a little relieved.

“They’re playing Bloody-”

“Don’t say it,” Lily says, and her voice raises sharply. “Don’t.”

“Okay. Lily, I need you to tell me where you are,” Sam says, spreading open a map on the dashboard. “We can come get you, but you need to tell us what street you’re on.”

“Windbrook,” Lily says. “Fiona lives on Windbrook.”

“Windbrook,” Sam repeats. He points it out on the map, and Dean starts driving, ten above the speed limit. “What number, Lily? We’re almost there.”

On the opposite wall, a shadow crosses the decorative mirror. Lily whimpers.

“Lily,” Sam says. “We’re almost there, just tell us the number and we’ll be right there.”

“28 Windbrook Road,” Lily says. “Are you almost here?”

“28 Windbrook Road,” Sam says. Dean presses on the gas. “Go put your shoes on, Lily, okay? We’re almost there.”

Shakily, Lily hangs up the phone. The girls have gathered again in the bedroom, and they’re laughing.

“Lily,” Fiona says. “Where are you going? Aren’t you having fun?”

“I’m going home,” Lily says. She makes eye contact with her reflection in the full length mirror in the corner of Fiona’s room. It grins at her nastily, and Lily’s secret twists her stomach. “I have to go home.”

She doesn’t even say goodbye. She runs downstairs and waits on the front stoop for what feels like a year before the Impala pulls up.

All the windows have been rolled down, and Sam offers her a blindfold when she gets in the car. Lily refuses, just squeezes her eyes shut and presses her forehead against her knees.

They speed back to the Shoemaker house. Donna’s bemusement turns quickly into worry when she sees Lily, shaking and terrified.

“Dean?” she asks, baffled. “What’s going on?”

“Cover the windows,” orders Sam. “Cover the mirrors. Keep her away from all reflective surfaces.”

“What?” Donna demands. “What the fuck happened? Did they do something, Lily? Why are you here?”

“I told them to come get me,” Lily says, her voice shaking. “Mary is coming after me. I saw her in the mirror.”

“Mary? What, you mean Bloody-”

“Don’t say it!” Lily screams, and Donna is shocked silent. Lily begins to cry and throws herself against Sam, crying into his jacket. Lily is not a tearful child and never has been, and Donna’s worry is becoming genuine fear.

“Listen.” Dean pulls Donna aside. “You see how scared she is?”

“Yes,” Donna stammers. 

“It’s not gonna be easy,” Dean says. “But cover all the reflections, and listen to her. Believe her. She’s keeping something really fucked up from you.” He feels a lump begin to grow in his throat, and he swallows it, trying to get through this without shaking. “You need to make her feel safe enough to tell you, okay?”

Donna stares at him. Then she nods. “Okay,” she says, her voice tiny. Dean pulls her into a brief, one armed hug. Just as quickly, he releases her, nods at Sam, and they’re gone.

The Impala screeches down the road, towards the antique mirror shop. Donna covers all the reflective surfaces in the house. She sits with her arms around Lily, letting Lily sob against her.

“It was my fault,” she wails. “I killed him, Donna, I’m sorry. I said it three times in the mirror and he died. I’m sorry, Donna.”

Donna, despite herself, believes Lily. She’s been aching for someone to blame, but when Lily confesses, Donna looks at her sister and can’t bring herself to be angry.

“Lily, honey,” Donna says softly. “I love you, you hear me? It was an accident. It’s not your fault, I promise. I still love you. It doesn’t matter what you did. You could’ve done the worst thing in the whole world, and I’d still love you.”

Lily looks up at Donna. All this time, she’d been expecting anger, or at least apathy. But there’s nothing in her sister’s expression but love.

Sam and Dean have broken into the antique mirror store. In twin bouts of fury, they’re smashing every mirror they can see. There’s cuts on their hands from flying glass. Still, it’s a certain kind of cathartic, all this destruction.

But they’ve tripped an alarm, and outside, sirens are wailing. Dean looks up. Almost on instinct, he drops his crowbar. It’s always been his job to deal with cops.

“Finish up,” he says. “I’ll handle this.”

He leaves the store, and Sam is alone.

It’s taking too long. Sam glances back to make sure Dean’s gone, and then he tightens his grip on the crowbar. He turns to face one of the mirrors.

“Bloody Mary,” he says. “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.”

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, ever so faintly, he feels a pressure in his forehead. It’s barely even uncomfortable at first. He stares at his reflection determinedly. He blinks, and it doesn’t. It smiles at him. The pressure in his head becomes painful. He swings the crowbar, and the mirror shatters.

But the pain doesn’t stop. He looks to his other side, and he sees his reflection laughing. He breaks that one too, and the pressure in his head keeps building. He keeps swinging, and the glass keeps shattering, and he keeps getting the wrong mirror.

“You knew she was going to die,” his reflection says, and he doesn’t even know where it’s coming from. He swings blindly, the pain in his head unbearable now. His vision is blurred red, and he can’t see, but he keeps swinging. “You had dreams about her dying for a week before the crash, and you didn’t do anything. How could a human being do that?  _ Ain’t no living human in this world that’s truly magic.  _ You never deserved her, never. She deserved someone good. She deser-”

Finally, the crowbar lands true. The mirror before which Mary Worthington bled out forty two years ago shatters, and the pain vanishes. Sam falls to his knees, barely registering the pain as broken glass pierces his skin. He breathes deeply. He should be relieved. He isn’t.

“Oh my fucking God. Sam.” Dean runs over to where Sam kneels, feeling the glass crunch under his boots. “Sam.” He hears his own voice break as he hauls his brother up. “Are you all right? Fuck. Sam. Sammy, answer me-”

“‘M’fine,” Sam mumbles. Dean lets out a harsh breath of a laugh, so relieved he thinks he’s about to cry. He swipes one thumb over the blood tracking down Sam’s face, but this only smears it.

“Jesus, you idiot. What did you-”

He stops, because they can both smell the ozone that’s flooding the air.

“Shit,” Sam mutters. He stumbles back, away from Dean, and collapses against the wall. Dean looks around wildly, and watches in horror as a young woman crawls from an ornate frame. She raises her head to look at him. He doesn’t have his gun, or salt, even, and it’s a last, desperate attempt when Dean picks up a huge shard of a mirror from the ground and raises it to face Mary. The glass is cutting into his hands, but he can see blood starting to pour from Mary’s eyes.

“You killed that man!” the mirror shrieks. “He was a father, and now his babies are all alone! You killed him!”

Mary crumples, blood streaming down her face, and then it’s over. Dean drops the mirror. Sam, closing his stinging eyes, can only think hazily of how sorry he feels for Mary.

They drive back to the Shoemaker house. Dean wipes the blood carefully from Sam’s face, but there’s nothing to do about his bloodshot eyes. Sam knocks gingerly on the door.

Donna opens. Her face is tearstained, but she’s relieved to see them. She takes in their bloody, hastily-wrapped hands, the redness of Sam’s eyes.

“It’s over?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “It’s over.” For Donna and Lily, it is.

They stay in town a few more days, giving Sam time to recover. Dean gives him space. He plays poker games and hustles pool to give the earnings to Donna and Lily, and he checks on Donna’s car to make sure it’s in good condition.

(“I didn’t think you were actually a mechanic,” Donna says. “What, do you just kill ghosts on weekends?”

“No, killing ghosts is my day job,” Dean says, grinning at her. “This is my weekend gig.”)

Donna and Lily, I’m glad to say, are very much all right going forward. They struggle, certainly. But they love one another very much, and they are sure of this if nothing else.

Eventually, Sam and Dean get wind of another case, and people at the local bars start refusing to play pool with Dean, and Sam feels better. And so they decide it’s time to move on.

They’re poking around a convenience store on the night that they’re leaving, looking for snacks for the road. Dean is pocketing more than he plans to buy, and Sam can’t help snickering as he watches candy disappear into Dean’s coat.

“Pack of Reds,” Dean says at the counter. Sam is still browsing the chips.

“Still can’t believe you started smoking,” Sam says. He’s thinking of the time when Dean was fifteen and came home smelling like cigarettes. Their father made him sprint three miles in the cold. At the end of it, when Dean was bent over and gasping for breath, John clapped him on the back and said, “Imagine if a werewolf was chasing you.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Dean replies. His primary memory of smoking used to be the same one Sam is thinking of now. But that’s changed, in the last four years. So much has.

“I guess,” Sam says after a moment. It always takes him by surprise when he learns something new about Dean, mostly because, by the time he was seventeen, he figured he knew all he ever needed to know about either Dean or their father.

In the parking lot, Dean lights a cigarette. Sam still instinctively hates the smell, but he doesn’t spite Dean his little secret.

“So,” Dean says. “Are you gonna tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Sam knows Dean hates it when he plays dumb. He does it anyway.

“Why Mary could come after you,” Dean says. “What the secret is.”

Sam stares at the parking lot. There’s plenty of cars, and despite the bitter cold of the night, they’re not the only ones standing out here, smoking and talking. The black asphalt seems to blink different colors under the changing neon sign.

“No,” says Sam.

He thinks Dean is going to press the point. But he just drops his cigarette, steps on it, and takes the car keys from his pocket.

“All right,” Dean says. “Let’s go.”

They go. Sam pretends to sleep. Dean knows he’s faking. He lets him.

In childhood, they were thick as thieves. They had to be. When their father was around, training ruled their lives: running two miles at the asscrack of dawn, strength training regardless of rain or snow, sparring with an instructor who didn’t care that they were kids and he was a veteran. When their father was gone, their lives revolved around getting by; putting food on the table and not getting the attention of CPS. They never surprised each other, when they were kids. Never once, until Sam packed his bag and announced that he had gotten into Stanford and booked a bus ticket to California.

Dean believes that first, big, nasty surprise is the first secret Sam ever kept from him. He’s wrong.

But how could you admit something like this? How do you turn to someone who loves you, the brother who raised you, and confess to him you are not human?


	5. Chapter 5

Lately, Dean smokes a lot.

That’s no way to start one of these, is it? Sorry. I’ll start over.

It’s a difficult thing, calling a car home. Even a cool, classic car, even a car that Dean has spent more collective hours in than any one house or bedroom in his life. For at least the following reasons: Firstly, he owns only about four different pairs of shirts and pants that he’s constantly ruining, and socks, underwear, and undershirts are basically weekly purchases (he steals ten packs from pharmacies, and it’s truly incredible how fast he goes through them what with blood and sweat and nasty washing machines). Secondly, his back and neck give him trouble. He’s only twenty six (going on twenty seven, it’s true; his birthday is in a month but this has slipped his mind), but his lower back bothers him all the time now. Hours spent sitting at the wheel, sleeping in his seat, getting out to dig up a skeleton (it takes all night to dig a proper six foot grave by yourself), and getting back in the car. His back twinges when he digs now, and if he turns his head too quickly a joint at the base of his neck pops just a bit, and he’s starting to get why, before his father disappeared, he made Dean do all the grunt work.

Thirdly (and this is not really a reason that Dean pretends to care about, but it’s real nonetheless and I think it’s worth mentioning), it’s virtually impossible to keep up with the days of the week. To be fair, this has more to do with their general lifestyle than the car in particular; Dean has never held a job for longer than five months in literally his entire life, and he stopped attending school more than thrice a week when he hit ninth grade. (He dropped out by twelfth.) In fact, the only extended periods of time that he’s consistently been aware of the days of the week are times when he was not living in his car. But again, this has less to do with the car and more to do with whatever the hell was going on in his life at the moment. (The first time, it was three months in juvenile detention, and the second time it was a year in prison. The third time, it was Cassie.)

Fourthly, it’s completely impossible to bring a girl home to the backseat of a car and  _ not  _ see the holy-shit-this-guy-is-either-a-serial-killer-or-a-junkie look cross her face.

Dean is ruminating on all of this as they look for a motel room for the night. They need to look for a motel room, since it’s ten below outside and they’d freeze to death if they slept in the car. It occurs to him that most people consider safety an essential aspect of the home, and if it isn’t safe to sleep there at night, then it can’t really count as home. But this train of thought depresses him, so he decides to think about something else.

They do, finally, find a motel room. They aren’t looking for a case. They just finished one that mostly went okay, although a couple cuts in Dean’s hands from the stupid Bloody Mary case a couple weeks back have torn open again. They really aren’t that bad, as cuts go, but Dean uses his hands a lot and he’s too impatient to let them heal properly. Sam, tonight, insists on sitting Dean down and washing and bandaging the cuts properly.

“And no smoking,” Sam says. “Every time you use your lighter this one starts bleeding again.” He presses one finger to a cut on the meat of Dean’s hand, and he winces.

“All right, all right,” Dean says irritably. “Fuck.”

Fifthly, you can’t really get away from the person you live with.

Sam and Dean don’t want to get away from each other, nothing so melodramatic as that. But it’s not easy between them. It hasn’t been since Toledo. (It hasn’t been for much longer. But Dean is choosing to focus on Toledo.)

It’s hard to explain, really, because their conversations are essentially the same. Brothers are mean to each other, they poke at each other’s wounds even as they bandage them up. They swear at each other, kick each other because one has left dirty underwear on the floor or shout  _ “Asshole!”  _ from the bathroom because the hot water is gone. Sometimes, all of this feels in delightfully good humor, and it’ll bring them closer and they’ll laugh and feel like the best friends in the world. Lately, it’s terse, snapping. Words will end in an annoyed twist of the mouth, rather than a lighthearted grin.

Some of it is Dean’s fault, and he knows that. He knows he’s been irritated, that he has been failing critically to take care of Sam. But, petulantly, childishly, he thinks that some of it must be Sam’s fault, too. He never forced Sam to come with him. He could have gone searching for their father on his own, and wouldn’t even have held it against Sam for not coming (this, of course, is untrue. He would have held it against Sam for a long time). What right does Sam have to go thin-lipped and angry and silent? What right does he have to drop some fucking bombshell about an earth-shattering secret that almost got him killed, but apparently Dean isn’t allowed to know about? What the fuck, Dean thinks angrily, is he supposed to do with that, exactly?

But Dean never voices any of this. He knows that if he does, something may break between them, irreparably, and despite the resentment he still doesn’t know what he’d do without Sam.

So instead, they just sit in their respective beds, watching Star Trek reruns, drinking beer. And it could be nice, but it’s not.

There’s a blizzard blowing through the Midwest, so they stay holed up for a couple days. They’re living off of ramen and the dried fruit that Sam insisted on, milling around the room as snow piles up outside, irritating one another beyond belief.

Sam hates the tension too, but he’s glad for it too, in a mean kind of way. Like when your hands are so numb and frozen that no matter how hard you gouge your palm with your nail, you don’t feel it, and you’re actually impressed at how fully you could alienate something attached to your own body.

The day it stops snowing, the first thing Dean does is crack the window and light a cigarette. The cold wakes Sam up first, and then the stink of the smoke, and he groans from under the covers.

“Dean!” he calls.

“What.” Dean blows smoke out the window.

“It’s nine in the fucking morning.”

“Let’s go get breakfast then.” Dean yanks the blanket off of Sam, who glares sleepily up at him in protest. “Come on, man, we’ve been stuck in here for days.” This, at least, is in earnest.

“Where we going?” Sam asks, not willing to get up yet. He gropes for the blanket, and Dean just holds it higher. Sam sighs theatrically, gets up to walk the two steps to Dean’s bed, and flops down there instead. Dean can’t figure out whether to laugh or be annoyed. He throws the stolen blanket onto Sam’s face, and after a few moments of disgruntled fumbling, Sam’s bedhead pokes up from the covers. Dean decides to laugh.

“Out,” Dean says, and he blows cigarette smoke at Sam’s face. “I’m crawling up the fucking walls in here, get up.”

After much cajoling, they do eventually end up at a diner. Sam grabs a couple newspapers from the boxes lined up outside, thinking vaguely about rustling up a case somewhere. They’re not often lucky enough to discover something over breakfast, but Sam, truthfully, would rather read the paper than try to hold a real conversation with Dean this morning.

Dean doesn’t order coffee with his breakfast, since he’s actually had more than enough sleep the past couple days. (Sixthly: eight hour nights are a rare luxury. But this, too, has much to do with circumstance. Their father woke them at dawn most days.) They’re running low on cash, and Dean makes a mental note of it as he dumps syrup over his entire plate.

“You’re gonna have a heart attack any day now,” Sam says idly.

“Anything interesting in there?” Dean asks, his mouth full. He tugs the other newspaper over to him and starts flipping through it with his left hand as he shovels food into his mouth with his right.

“Two headed cow,” Sam says. He’s reading the local paper from this small Wisconsin town, so there’s little of real note. “Ah, shit. Blizzard.”

“No way,” Dean says, not even looking up to gesture out the window at the thick layer of snow. He’s looking through the middle pages of the Sun-Times. The front pages of big papers never contain anything relevant.

Dean drops his fork, and it clatters loudly against the plate. Sam barely looks up, incorrectly assuming it was just clumsiness.

“Think there’s a case here,” Dean says. He’s lying. Through his teeth.

“Oh yeah?” Sam puts down his paper and leans forward. He doesn’t realize Dean is lying, which isn’t his fault. It’s silly to lie about a case.

Dean flips the paper around and points to a little article, crammed into the corner of the page: TENANTS DIE OF EXPOSURE IN THEIR OWN BEDS, and then, in smaller print, CASSIE ROBINSON.

“I don’t know, dude,” Sam says as he reads the article. “Title sounds like something, but this is about the heat failing in the middle of winter. It’s really sad, but I don’t think it’s our thing.”

“It’s all in one building, though,” Dean points out. “And the victims are all mothers. Sounds like a pattern to me.” He’s lying. But the funny thing is, despite the fact that Dean just like Sam assumes this is all a tragic coincidence, it  _ is  _ actually a case.

“I guess,” Sam says doubtfully. He looks at Dean over the top of the newspaper, wondering if there’s something in particular drawing Dean to this case. There is, of course, but Sam can’t for the life of him think of what it might be. “We could check it out. Chicago’s, what, two hours away?”

“One hour,” Dean says. He picks up his fork and stuffs an entire fried egg, slathered in grease and syrup, into his mouth.

“You’re disgusting,” Sam informs Dean. He looks back at the article. “All right, well, she mentions first names and the street they live on. That should be enough to find the building through public records, right?”

“First names will have been changed,” Dean says.

Sam scrutinizes Dean, and then the article. He’s right. It says at the bottom in tiny print: ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE PRIVACY OF INDIVIDUALS. Dean didn’t read this note, didn’t even notice it at the bottom of the page, but Sam doesn’t know that. 

“So, I guess we’re looking for Cassie Robinson, then,” Sam says.

Dean swallows the last bite of food on his plate. It goes down easy, but it doesn’t quite feel like it, and his own voice sounds strange to his ears when he speaks. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re looking for Cassie Robinson.”

You might be wondering what, exactly, Dean’s plan is here. The truth is, he doesn’t really have one. All he knows or has ever known is his stubborn, angry father and his stubborn, angry brother. And now neither of them seem to want much to do with him anymore, their father avoiding him and Sam keeping secrets, and Dean, who prides himself on feeling at home anywhere, as long as he’s got his car, is lost.

Dean has always needed someone to live for, and, I think, that’s what he’s searching for here.

So they make the short trip to Chicago. It’s short work finding Cassie Robinson’s current address (Dean lets Sam hunt through Whitepages even though he knows damn well Cassie’s current address), and before long they’re standing in a sparse neighborhood in front of a slightly rundown house, the same house Cassie has lived in since she was born. 

It suddenly hits Dean how fucking insane this is just as Sam rings the doorbell.

“Hold on,” Dean says. “Sam. We should leave. This was a mistake.”

“What?” Sam says incredulously. “What the hell, Dean, you’re the one who wanted to-”

The door opens then, and there’s Cassie, mouth already open in shock.

“Dean,” she says. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Sam looks at Cassie. She’s beautiful, he notes, in a lofty kind of way. Her cheekbones are high and patrician, her rich dark skin is smooth, and her full mouth has an elegant turn to it when she speaks. He looks at Dean, the sort of shell shock in his expression, the way he’s staring at Cassie like he’s starving. To Sam’s credit, it only takes him until this moment to realize what’s going on. 

I feel that I’ve left you slightly in the dark here, but I’m sure you’ve figured out, generally, what’s going on. So I’ll fill in the gaps for you.

In 2000, Dean was incarcerated for grave desecration and resisting arrest. He got out in June of 2001 on parole, just in time to see Sam graduate high school. The summer following this was wonderful. Sam and John had been at one another’s throats all year, but everything became right and good again when Dean returned. In celebration of the momentous summer, John gave Dean the Impala. Dean loved that damn car, he loved his brother, he loved his father, he loved his life even if it was hard and strange and he had to pay his parole fees every month. It was one of the best summers of his life, in a small suburb just north of Chicago, Illinois.

Then in August, Sam walked into the living room with a duffel on his back and declared that he was leaving for California that night. And it all went to hell after that.

The fight was apocalyptic, years and years of resentment and rage between Sam and John boiling over into a nasty, violent, hours-long argument that Dean couldn’t defuse no matter how hard he tried. When it was finally over, Dean drove Sam to the bus station in Chicago. The car ride was quiet. A bruise was forming on Sam’s jaw, and one too on Dean’s cheek.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean asked, quiet.

“You were locked up,” Sam scoffed. “What, did you want to proofread my essays?” He was furious, maybe rightfully, that Dean hadn’t sided with him.

That was the last time Dean and Sam saw each other for four years.

Dean and John splintered. John refused to even say Sam’s name for months. Often, he would go on hunts out of state by himself, leaving Dean, angry and sad and still on parole, alone for weeks at a time. Dean started driving into the city just to get out of the suburb he’d seen too much of lately. It was then that he met Cassie.

Cassie had a degree in journalism from a prestigious university and a prestigious internship. Her job entailed, mostly, hounding the mayor’s aide for a quote every time the political arena shifted, although she was starting to feel disillusioned, following around her rich white contacts for stories about the rich white areas of Chicago which seemed so disconnected from the area that she’d grown up in. She and Dean met, coincidentally, researching the same story: a state senator’s wife found strangled in a Dumpster. (Neither story panned out; it was not a supernatural occurrence, and Cassie’s boss pared down the article she wrote to one that did not implicate the extremely guilty senator.)

“I don’t know,” Cassie said to Dean. She was smoking a cigarette, sitting up in bed, Dean lying on his back beside her. “This is such a good job, but this isn’t what I wanted to do with it. They’re using my work.”

“Fuck them, then,” Dean said. Cassie shook her head, her instinct being to dismiss this out of hand. Her home, you see, has always been a slightly rundown house in a sparse neighborhood, always the same comfortable bedroom with chipped light blue walls and piles of clothes she kept forgetting to put away, always the same sparse neighborhood, the same neighbors, the same corner store, the same church. Always the same plan: go to school, get a degree, save the world in big leaping bounds, become the Robinson in Woodward and Bernstein.

Dean never saw the world in big leaping bounds, though, and although he’d spent years begging Sam to compromise with John, he (unlike Sam) had no taste for compromising in any world bigger than the Impala. So it seemed very simple to him: fuck them, then.

“I can’t,” Cassie said unsurely. “My boss told me I’m basically guaranteed a permanent position if I stick it out this year. I mean, the Sun-Times, Dean, it’s one of the biggest papers in the country.”

Dean opened his mouth, a wordless request, and she obliged him, placing the cigarette delicately between his lips. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke pensively towards the ceiling. “Sure,” he said. “They put your name on that article, though. And they’re gonna keep putting your name on their articles. How are you gonna save the world like that?”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said. Absentmindedly, she worked her fingers through Dean’s hair. She liked his hair, thick and black and soft now that she’d made him stop using three in one shampoo. “I don’t know.”

Cassie put in her two weeks’ notice less than a month later, palms sweating as she signed away the biggest opportunity she’d ever had. She had a moment of panic that night, briefly furious with Dean for convincing her to quit. He had, in truth, done nothing of the sort, only having given his honest opinion on the subject, and he said so. It was one of their only fights, and it lasted less than an hour. He had, after all, made dinner, a recipe Cassie’s mother taught him. Neither of them could stand to be angry for long, eating together and listening to her mother praise Dean’s cooking.

Cassie began writing freelance for smaller papers. She used her resources whenever she could, the contacts she’d never much liked but had great use for. The articles, though, concerned the local triumphs and catastrophes of her childhood friends, her neighbors, churchgoers and dropouts and single mothers. It wasn’t saving the world, and often it was small and tedious work. But it was good work, fed by love and community, and this, Cassie came to learn, was better than anything.

There’s more to say about Cassie and Dean and the way that they loved each other. I could tell you about the hours they spent talking about their worlds, their homes, their upbringings, diametrical opposites in each other’s loving hands. I could tell you how Cassie was moved almost to tears when she watched Dean play cards with her forgetful mother, and how Dean’s heart swelled when Cassie drove his car for the first time, laughing and comfortable and looking like she’d been driving it for years. I could tell you how many ways they rubbed off on each other, that Cassie isn’t embarrassed anymore about singing off-key and loud along to the radio, that Dean smokes Cassie’s Marlboro Reds when he’s stressed.

But the most important parts are never the happy ones, are they?

Dean lived with Cassie on and off for eight months in her childhood home. The day after his parole ended, John called him.

“I’m in Lindsay, Nebraska,” he said. “Some kind of snake monster. Need you to get here by tomorrow.” 

Cassie demanded a truthful explanation. Dean gave her one. She told him to get the hell out of her house, and he did.

Within a few months, things were back to normal (or as normal as they could ever be, anyway, without Sam). For three years, he kept her number saved in every one of his phones, and wished he had the balls to call her.

He never did. But he does, apparently, have the balls to show up to her home unannounced. Dean feels a deep embarrassment begin to heat his neck, and hopes she can’t tell as he gives her a brazen grin.

“Hey, Cassie,” he says. “How’s your mom?”

Cassie stares at Dean. He’s older, strangely so. His brown face is weary despite the easy smile, and his nose is crooked now, because it’s been broken since the last time she saw him. 

“She asked about you.” It’s the only thing Cassie can think of to say. “For, like, months after you left.”

It’s not what Dean expected her to say. His smile wilts.

Sam decides this needs to end. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know you were, uh.” He glances at Dean. “We’ll leave. Sorry for botheri-”

“Could I say hi?” Dean interrupts. “To your mom?” 

Sam thinks, with sincere surprise, that Dean has gone completely fucking insane. Never once in his entire life has Dean surprised him like this.

“It turned out to be early-onset Alzheimer’s,” Cassie says. She’s still dumbfounded, but to her own surprise, she’s not really angry. She can’t reconcile her memory of Dean, talking manically about monsters as he threw clothes into a duffel bag, with the flesh and blood man standing in front of her, watching her through those dark lashes. “So she might not remember you.”

The Robinson home is old and familiar. It’s safe and warm and has happy pictures of Cassie and her family sitting on the mantel. Although Cassie’s father died when she was seventeen, the home does not feel haunted. 

To everyone’s surprise, Cassie’s mother does recognize Dean. She doesn’t remember his name, and keeps forgetting it no matter how many times he tells her, but she’s genuinely glad to see him. She insists on making tea for everyone, and waves off Cassie and Dean’s offers to help. 

It’s the oddest visit Sam has ever had in his life. He likes Cassie, to be sure. She’s clearly smart, educated, sophisticated. An excellent writer, if the article he read this morning was anything to go off of. But he can’t really understand how his brother, felon, dropout, obsessed with his classic car and late-night TV, fell in love with a woman like Cassie. For that matter, he doesn’t really understand how Cassie fell in love with a man like Dean.

Sam is trying to puzzle all this out when the conversation turns to Cassie’s article from this morning.

“It was good,” Dean says.

“Did you read it?” Cassie says.

“Yeah.” He’s a little stung. Then Cassie laughs, and Dean can’t resist laughing, too. “Uh, some of it,” he amends. “It was... good.”

By _ good _ , he means,  _ I heard it like you were talking right next to me, fast and excited like you used to do. _ He means,  _ I saw what it took to write it, the hours you spent talking to friends and neighbors and relatives-of-deceased, the tears you cried afterward, the love you put into it. _ He means, _ I would have recognized your voice even if your name wasn’t attached to it, I would know you anywhere. _

But Dean can’t articulate any of that, so he just says something else instead. “I’m sorry about those women.”

Cassie’s eyes cloud. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t fair that two people had to die before they fixed the fucking heat. The whole building is suing the management company, but it won’t bring those women back, and the heat’s failed every winter for years.”

“Are the kids okay?” Dean asks. 

“They’re safe, if that’s what you mean,” Cassie says, sighing. “Monica’s kids are still there with their dad, and Lora’s went to their grandmother. But they’re all traumatized.” She pauses. She’s thinking of what the kids had told her when she talked to them, that in the middle of the night they’d heard footsteps and smelled something strange, and then had woken up the next morning to find their mother frozen to death in bed. But she doesn’t want to say it aloud to Dean, remembering his insane story about ghosts and monsters from three years ago. She ignores the doubt chewing at her, and changes the subject.

They drink their tea. The awkward conversation limps on, neither Dean nor Cassie willing to end it despite its banality, until finally Sam stands up and professes that he’s tired. This is patently absurd, since it’s four in the afternoon, but everyone is willing to accept it if it means the end of the visit.

“Dude,” Sam says as they get in the car. “That was so fucking bad.”

Dean drops his forehead against the steering wheel. “What is fucking wrong with me?” he asks the dashboard. Sam laughs.

“Man, I don’t think you said one complete sentence the entire time,” Sam says. “You were  _ really _ in love with her, huh?”

“I can’t believe  _ you _ are making fun of me about being bad with girls,” Dean says, lifting his head. He starts the car. 

“I can’t believe  _ you  _ have a secret ex-wife in Chicago,” Sam says, laughing. “When did this even happen?”

“She’s not my ex-wife,” Dean grumbles. “We just… I don’t know, dude, it was a weird time. I was on parole, I couldn’t leave the state, so we started hanging out a lot. The lease ended on that place in Ford Heights and Dad was gone too much for him to bother finding a new place in the city, so I just stayed with Cassie most of the time.”

Sam is a little stunned. “You never told me that,” he says.

“When was I supposed to tell you?” Dean asks. They’re veering too close to an argument, and Dean forces a laugh. “Doesn’t matter. I told her what we do and she ran screaming in the other direction.”

“She didn’t look like she was running screaming.” Sam watches his brother. “She looked about as nervous as you, actually.” A long pause. “Just an observation,” Sam adds, suppressing a smile at how uncomfortable Dean looks.

“Still doesn’t matter,” Dean says. “I don’t live here.”

Sam nods slowly. “You know, I thought you didn’t really do that kind of thing,” he says thoughtfully. “Like, long term.”

For whatever reason, this is what pisses Dean off. “Do you want a notarized list of every fucking thing I’ve never told you?” he snaps. “I’m sorry it freaks you out that somebody would actually want to live with me, but hey, it kind of freaks me out that you have some big secret that you almost got killed for and still won’t tell me.”

Sam is so confused by the outburst that he just stares at Dean for a moment, baffled and a little hurt. Then the anger starts building. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “Jesus, Dean, you drag me down to Chicago to pine after some woman you left years ago and I’m the asshole here?”

“I didn’t leave her,” Dean bites out, and Sam shakes his head, thoroughly bewildered now.

“Is that what this is about?” Sam demands. “You know, normal people are happy when their brothers get into a top ten school. Normal people, like, people who didn’t drop out to kill monsters or go to jail for fucking grave desecration.” 

“Oh, fuck you, man,” Dean says. “Was your childhood really that fucking traumatic?” He pulls into the parking lot of the first motel they see. It’s more of a hotel, really, and much more expensive than they’d usually go for, but Dean doesn’t care. He thinks that if he has to sit in the car with Sam for another five minutes he’ll start throwing things.

“Are you joking?” Sam says incredulously. He slams the car door shut just slightly too hard, glaring at Dean’s back. “Yes, Dean! Dad treated us like soldiers-”

“I’m not talking about Dad,” Dean says angrily. He goes inside without waiting for Sam and slaps a credit card on the counter. “Two queens.”

“Really fucking mature, dude,” Sam spits as he stumbles inside, stomping snow from his boots. “What are you even mad about right now?”

The question stops Dean in his tracks. The truth is, he’s not really sure what he’s mad about. He’s a little mad at Sam, and a little mad at their father, but that doesn’t really seem to account for all of his anger. And right now, the only thing he knows for certain is that if he stays here he’s going to say something he’ll regret.

“You know what?” Dean throws the credit card and a room key at Sam. “Enjoy the cable. I’m going out.” Then he storms outside, and Sam watches the Impala pull out of the parking lot in disbelief.

Family is confusing. Neither of them are sure what they’ve just argued about, and neither are sure why they’re sitting alone, one in the car and one in the motel, stewing and furious at each other. Sam is thinking that he cannot fucking believe he blew up his life- his good life, his respectable job, a JD from Stanford- for his shitty delinquent family, for thin meals in a cold motel room, for broken bones and concussions. But that just makes him think of Jess, and it’s hard to keep up the anger after that, sitting in a cold motel room with a cup of ramen warming his hands.

Dean, in the car that he has always loved, is not thinking something altogether different. He’s remembering all the arrests, the time he served in state prison because the cops were chasing all three of them and he’d stopped and turned so that John and Sam could get away. He’s remembering how John demanded more help on hunts, and Sam was begging to be allowed to go to school instead, so Dean dropped out to accompany their father. He’s remembering what Cassie looked like, her eyes teary and furious as he left.

All he ever wanted was to keep their little home together. He’d sunk his entire fucking self into keeping their family close-knit, contorting himself into something that could play soldier or parent or prisoner, and now where is their family? Secretive, angry, falling apart.

He stops the car in front of the Robinson home.

“Dean,” Cassie says. She’s surprised to see him.

“I really missed you,” Dean blurts. “I really did. I wanted to call, but it ended so bad between us, I didn’t know how.”

Cassie opens her mouth, but Dean keeps talking, suddenly bent on getting all of this out. “And I know you thought I was crazy for everything I told you. Or that it was some fucked up excuse. But I- it’s okay, if you think I’m crazy or something, but I need you to believe that I wanted to stay with you.” Dean knows his voice is becoming more and more desperate, but he can’t stop himself. “I wanted to stay.”

Cassie has spent a lot of time, over the years, thinking about Dean. He wasn’t her first love (or her last one, for that matter), but still she thinks of him. Cassie’s life is one that demands incredible strength. She cares for her mother and pays her student loans on a freelance journalist’s salary. She fights monsters from her typewriter, and she loses more often than she wins. No, Cassie would not give up her life and her work for anything, but it weighs heavy sometimes. With Dean, she felt loved. She felt light.

She tells Dean none of this. Instead, she just steps back and lets him in. In Cassie’s bed, feeling her skin against his, Dean thinks the same thing he did the first time this happened years ago: this isn’t home, but it could be.

In the early evening, Cassie’s cell phone rings. It’s her best friend. Dean is downstairs, cooking dinner, so Cassie feels good about answering the phone and leading with, “Letitia, you’ll never fucking believe what happened today.”

“Oh yeah?” Letitia asks. “Whatever it is, I think I got you beat.”

Something in Letitia’s voice is off. The smile melts from Cassie’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Letitia exhales shakily. “They fixed the heat, right?” she says. “After those girls died downstairs.”

“Yeah,” Cassie says slowly.

“I was taking a nap after I got home from work today,” Letitia says. “It just got so cold, all of a sudden, and it started smelling funny, like… like chlorine, I guess, I don’t know. I heard somebody walking around in the front room. I thought it was Marcy, so I yelled out for her. She came in, but I looked up, and it. It wasn’t her, Cassie. It was a little boy I never seen before.”

“Did he break in?” Cassie asks.

“No,” Letitia says firmly. “He called me mama, asked to come and sleep with me, said he was cold. I asked him where his mom was. And- Jesus, Cassie, I know I’m about to sound insane, but Marcy walked in, home from school, and the second she lays eyes on this little boy he fucking disappeared.”

“He left?”

“He  _ disappeared.  _ Thin fucking air,” Letitia insists. “Smell disappeared too, right away. Christ. Marcy was crying for an hour. She told me-” Letitia swallows roughly. “You know she’s friends with Monica’s kids? She said Eric told her this same story.”

“Jesus.” Cassie pins the phone between her ear and shoulder and lights a cigarette. “Are you okay?”

Letitia lets out a harsh laugh. “I’m fine, but Cassie, you wrote the article on this, didn’t you? Got it in all the papers? You gotta tell me I’m not crazy. I can’t ask anybody else, not Monica’s husband or anybody.”

Cassie inhales deeply. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she says at long last, watching the smoke pour from her mouth. “Listen, I need to call you back. You’re gonna be fine, okay?”

Letitia begins to protest, but Cassie hangs up. For a minute, she just sits in her bed, smoking her uneasy cigarette.

Then she goes downstairs and tells Dean everything. As she tells him, Dean feels a weight settle heavy on his shoulders.

When Dean calls Sam, he picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, man, we got a case,” Dean says. “I’m picking you up in twenty minutes.”

“All right,” Sam answers.

They elect to focus on the case instead of each other. Cassie, who insisted on coming along, can feel the tension between them, but she cares far more about protecting Letitia than their family squabbles.

This case, as far as actual work goes, is easy. After only about two hours of research, they discover a nineteen year old article about a rent strike in the building. Cassie, well-connected because of her profession, makes a few calls, and the story takes shape. The rent strike was because, in late December of 1986, the heat in the building failed for a week, and a seven year old boy named Tyrell Baker froze to death while his mother was at work. The heat was fixed, the rent strike was thwarted, and all had been quiet until eleven years later, when the heat in the building failed for a week in late December. Cassie knows the rest of the story. Every winter since 1997, one or two mothers living in the building freeze to death in their beds.

“He’s looking for his mom,” Sam says hollowly.

The bones are salted and burned under the cover of the snowy night. Cassie watches from the car, shivering despite the running heat, and thinks that she could never make a home of this.

“I didn’t want to believe it was a ghost,” Cassie says as they drive back.

“Nobody does,” Dean says. His back aches.

“I think the worst part of it is knowing that nothing is really fixed,” Cassie says, resting her forehead against the cold window. She’s right. The tenants will lose their lawsuit against the management company. There will be no justice for any of them, not Tyrell or Monica or Lora or anyone else. 

“At least no one else will die,” Dean says.

“The heat will break again,” Sam says tiredly. 

“Most evil thing in the world,” Cassie says distantly. “To make people unsafe in their own homes.”

They drive Cassie back to her house. She offers them tea or the guest room. Dean, feeling Sam’s eyes on the back of his head, hearing his father’s voice although he’s miles away, says no. It is the last time he will see Cassie for a very long time, and later, he will regret the terse goodbye he gives her tonight. Cassie will be angry with herself for expecting anything different.

Sam thinks of all he’s learned about his brother lately. He wants to say something, wants to tell Dean it’s all right, he should spend time with Cassie if he wants to. But before he can find the words, they’re already off again, heading back to the hotel.

They walk carefully around each other. Sam lets Dean shower first, and Dean makes Cup Noodles for both of them even though they’re sick of ramen.

“I like Cassie,” Sam says finally.

That actually makes Dean smile. “Yeah?” he says. “Good.”

Sometimes this is what family is. Hurting each other in a hundred little ways without meaning to, saying and thinking cruel things, apologizing without apologizing, hoping that the goodwill makes up for the bad. Secrets still weigh Sam down and resentment still churns Dean’s stomach, but they’re trying hard to forgive each other. They really are.

I don’t know if it would’ve worked. Probably not. But they don’t get the chance to find out, because barely an hour after they fall asleep, Dean’s phone rings.

Dean pretends to be asleep. Sam reaches over and picks up the phone, grumbling at Dean. They’ve done this little routine countless times, but tonight it’s in good humor for the first time in a while. 

But when Dean lifts his head from the pillow to ask who’s on the phone, Sam isn’t amused. He’s not even angry. He’s just struck dumb, his eyes wide and shocked.

“Who is it?” Dean asks again, alert now.

“It’s Dad,” Sam says faintly.

You already know how differently Sam and Dean feel about John. But right now, an identical hope is rising in their chests, a hope that finally they’ll get some answers, that finally their father is coming back to them.

They won’t, and he isn’t. This family is about to fracture more totally than it has since August of 2001.

All that is coming. Don’t rush toward it, because this is a sad story, and the sad parts will become exhausting. Stay with me here for a moment, this tenuous moment where Dean and Sam are staring at each other with bated breath and bright eyes, thinking with relief that maybe, finally, they will get to feel safe in their own home.


	6. Chapter 6

As a child, Sam ran away from home often.

No. Sorry.

As a child, Sam ran away from his family often. Four times, between the ages of seven and fourteen, he disappeared for days, two weeks on one notable occasion. Four times Sam stuffed a Ziploc baggie of change and crumpled fives into one pocket and a knife into the other and set out on his own, four times John tore up the entire state looking for his son and berated Dean for letting Sam out of his sight. Once Sam hit high school, he stopped running away, and Dean and John thought with relief he’d finally grown out of it. (In 1997, they found a job in sunny California. Sam’s guidance counselor took the freshman class on a tour of UC Santa Barbara. This was when the fifth getaway plan began forming in Sam’s mind.)

So, if you asked any of the Winchesters how many times Sam ran away from his family, they would say either four or five, depending on how charitable they were feeling towards Sam at the moment. The truth is that Sam ran away far more often than that.

In childhood, before he realized what could lurk in the shadows of a home, he would fold himself up as small as he could get and wedge himself, unseen, in tiny dark spaces. Dean used to halfway panic, but always managed to make it into a game of hide-and-seek that let Sam pretend he’d been playing the whole time, that let him fall laughing against his big brother. When he grew older, and wiser, Sam found different ways to run away. He would sit on the roof for hours, worn sneakers digging heel-first into the worn shingles. When he made friends, he would spend all afternoon at their houses and stay there for dinner.

Even at Stanford, Sam used to run away, wandering dorm buildings and parks, falling asleep on a friend’s couch. Once, he spent a solid weekend in the library, dozing at his desk and living off of coffee and pastries.

I tell you this so that you will understand: when you have lived your life as a foreigner, never knowing a home that didn’t spit you out, running away is tempting. It offers the unique hope that maybe this time, you’ll find yourself getting  _ there, _ find yourself running  _ to  _ something instead of  _ away _ .

Tonight, Sam feels that same hope raise its timid head. He knows that his father has always disappointed him, of course he knows, and usually he hates him for it. But tonight, half-fogged with sleep and hearing John’s voice unusually soft, Sam feels some small, tender, sentimental part of him rouse itself.

“Where are you?” he breathes. “Dad.”

“Give your brother the phone,” John says. Usually this would enrage Sam, but his father sounds so unbearably gentle that Sam doesn’t even think twice before handing the phone to Dean. Dean presses the phone to his ear, wide-eyed. He’s desperate for some direction, because he’s felt so very useless lately, and deeply, viscerally, fearfully, he believes that being useless to the people he loves is the most unforgivable thing he could ever be guilty of. 

Dean asks John where he is. John refuses to tell him. Instead, he describes a case: one couple, every winter, disappears near Plainsoak, New York.

“Yes sir,” Dean says quietly. He writes down the name of the town, feeling Sam watching him.

“Good man,” John says, almost approving. Without answering, Dean hangs up, telling himself to trust in his father’s plan.

“Is that where he is?” Sam asks, leaning forward to peer at Dean’s notebook in the low light. Dean’s never been able to keep records like his father has, and the shitty cardboard notebook is ragged and disorganized. Dean covers it with his hand like it’s something precious.

“No,” he says. “We got a job there. Go back to sleep. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.” He turns off the light and lies down, willing Sam to just go to bed, willing Sam to let Dean have this.

Sam doesn’t.

“A job?” he asks. He turns the light back on. “Dad’s sending us on a  _ job?”  _

“Yeah, man,” Dean says into his pillow. Please, he thinks. Please, just this once.

“And you don’t even have anything to say about that?” Sam asks. His anger has returned in full force, rage and disbelief and loneliness biting painfully at each other in his chest. “Just, yes sir, we’ll be right there sir, thank you sir?”

Dean gives up. He sits up and faces his brother. “What do you want me to do?” he asks, and for once, he’s too tired not to let his exhaustion show in his voice. “He said he was hunting the demon. Said it wasn’t safe for us to meet him now, but in the meantime to work this case. It’ll get us closer to finding him.”

(It won’t.)

“You believe every word that comes out of his mouth,” Sam says, staring at Dean. “Literally every single thing he says. Months, Dean, fucking months we’ve been running around the country looking for him, worrying about him, calling him and getting voicemail, and the whole time he could have just picked up the phone. That doesn’t seem weird to you?”

Dean scrubs a hand down his face. “Of course it does,” he says tightly. He wants to be patient, but he’s sick of mediating this fight. “But, Sam, he’s not stupid, and he cares about keeping us safe. He’s been doing this as long as you’ve been alive, okay? I trust him.”

Sam can barely believe what he’s hearing. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says. “You’re fucking brainwashed, Dean.”

At this, Dean’s hackles begin to rise. “He’s kept us safe all these years, hasn’t he?” Dean demands. “Would it kill you to trust him a little? It’s not like we’re doing anything but hunting anyway.”

“Are you insane?” Sam says. A familiar feeling is coming over him, the strange sense that Dean and John are conspiring to convince him that he’s crazy for telling them that the sky is blue. “He kept us safe from danger that he put us in! And you’re somehow convinced you owe him your life!”

“I do,” Dean snaps back. “A hundred fucking times over, and so do you. And you owe me your life, and I owe you mine. That’s what this family fucking is, Sam, so stop being selfish. He’ll tell us what’s going on when he’s ready.”

Sam shakes his head, unable to speak for a moment. “You believe every goddamn thing he says.” He gets to his feet and starts to pace, suddenly restless. “This is why I can’t tell you anything, you know that?”

Dean feels his entire body stiffen. “What?”

Sam rounds on him, suddenly furious. “This is why I didn’t tell you I was leaving for school until the night of!” he shouts. “Because you would have ratted me out to Dad, because you think he’s God or something! This is why I can’t tell you this- this fucking secret, Christ, because I know you’ll look at me like I’m some freak-” 

“What the  _ hell  _ are you talking about?” Dean demands. He’s on his feet, now, too, and he can hear his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears. “Is this about that shit that happened in Toledo?”

Sam laughs wildly. “You’re so fucking blind, Dean,” he says, almost marveling. He starts pacing again. He feels his hands shaking, and tightens his fists to try to settle them. It doesn’t work. “I’m not- I’m not normal, and you never noticed. I’ve been hiding it from you since I was old enough to know  _ monsters have magic, and humans use it.”  _ It’s with the same rhythm and intonation their father always used with them. The words bring a cold chill through Dean’s body as he remembers hours and hours of lessons. Sam laughs again, and it barely even sounds human.

“Yeah,” he says. “Like that, like you’re looking at me right now. You know, for the longest time, I thought it was just… just dreams, and I even convinced myself of it enough to think that I could just go to school, that I could just be a regular person. But I saw Jess die a fucking week before it happened, Dean, days before you even came to get me.”

Dean’s head is spinning. “So- so what?” he stammers. It comes out shy, uncertain, useless, and he hates himself. “What is it? Like, visions of the future?”

“Yeah,” Sam says recklessly, “and it’s been happening as long as I can remember, but you two hammered that shit into my head so well I just repressed it until Jess died. But now I know, and now you know.”

Dean is shaking his head, denying. This is what he does. “I know you, Sam,” he says flatly. “I’ve been watching you since you were two minutes old, you’re a human being.”

“Not according to Dad!” Sam feels mean and insane and unmoored, and he’s itching to run, and he can hear himself screaming at his brother like it’s someone else. “And I know you fucking know that, Dean, I know you’re wondering what I am right now.” He’s right, and Dean flushes with shame and fury. “What’s the lead theory, hm? Changeling? I can see that one, since you haven’t let me out of your fucking sight since-”

“Since when, huh?” Dean shouts. He’s taken the bait. Knowing that doesn’t make him any less angry. “I’ve taken my eyes off you plenty, and every goddamn time you pull this shit! When Dad was away, I couldn’t leave you alone for five minutes without worrying about CPS! When I got locked up in Arizona, I got out to find Dad tearing his fucking hair out because you ran away and squatted in a trailer with a dog for two weeks! When I went to jail, I came back to you abandoning us for four fucking years! Sue me if I want to-”

“Oh, that’s fucking rich,” Sam scoffs. “Yeah, all right, pull the protector card. Don’t kid yourself, you piece of shit, all right? You were a prison warden.”

“You and your victim complex,” Dean sneers. “Did you tell all your little college friends about your fucked up childhood? You hate us that much, that you kept this secret that long? You really think, what, we would’ve hunted you? You fucking asshole.” He pauses, still denying. “It’s probably just a curse, anyway, some witch who we-”

“It’s not a curse,” Sam cuts him off. They fall quiet then. Neither of them quite know what to do with all the cruelty they’ve just spit at each other. It just sits there between them, poisonous and gasping. 

“Fuck this,” Sam says at last. Without looking at Dean, he starts stuffing his clothes into his backpack.

“Where are you going?” Already, worry is welling up past the anger, but Dean is too proud to let it show. “Sam, don’t be an idiot-”

“I’ve had enough,” Sam says flatly. “I don’t even know why I’m here.” 

So, for the sixth (or hundredth) time, Sam runs away, his wallet fat with scavenged cash, carrying nothing but a knife, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes. Dean watches him go, wanting badly to tell him that it’s freezing outside and that he should put on more layers than that, but he holds his tongue. And by the time the sun rises, they’re moving in opposite directions: Dean towards Plainsoak, New York, and Sam towards Stanford, California.

It is Christmas Day. Neither of them realize this until several hours later. Dean catches a glimpse at the date on a newspaper when he stops for gas and food (he has to steal both, because he let Sam take all the cash), and Sam realizes it on his own, as he sits in a conspicuously empty bus station.

They think of Christmas. Sam remembers the Christmas of 1991, as he does every year. He wonders if Dean is thinking of the same day.

He isn’t. Dean is remembering the Christmas of 1986.

In 1986, John went on a hunt in Michigan. He left his young sons in Dearborn, at the home of Faisal and Najwa Yakoub. They had not seen the children since the funeral, and Najwa cried as she held Dean.

“So much like Maryam,” she said. “Oh, habibi, just like Maryam.”

The hunt ran too long. John did not return in time for Christmas. This meant nothing to Najwa and Faisal, both devout Muslims, and nothing to Sam, who was three and still had not started speaking, but Dean cried. He sobbed and asked for his father and could not be comforted, insisting that John had promised to be home. He fell asleep early, with his head aching and his eyelashes stiff with tears. Sam lay beside him, quiet and unwilling to leave his brother’s side.

Late that night, Dean opened his eyes. Sam was asleep beside him. He could hear his grandparents talking quietly in the other room. They slipped between Arabic and English, but he could tell they were talking about him.

“You see the way he eats?” Najwa fretted. “He’s hungry.”

“John does not answer his phone anymore,” Faisal said, disgusted. “These American men. He’s gone, maybe.”

Najwa burst into tears. “We should never have left Falasteen,” she sobbed. “We should never have left. Maryam might still be-”

“Never left?” Faisal asked, his voice hard. “No. I would be a free foreigner before I am treated like a dog in my own home.”

“We are not free here,” Najwa said, quiet and mutinous. They had had this fight before.

Dean closed his eyes and went back to sleep. And days passed in this way. He didn’t cry as much. He listened to Faisal read the Qur’an. He played with his cousins, and he brought rocks and bugs and handfuls of snow inside to make Sam laugh. Najwa made him eat four or five times a day, and before every meal, she would pat his hand and remind him to say  _ bismillah  _ before he ate.

John returned. From the car, Dean watched John argue with Faisal. They drove away in the snow, and John never brought them back.

Sam has no memory of this. Dean thinks about it every Christmas.

Dean reaches Plainsoak, New York that night. There’s no motel within forty miles, and he’s too tired to find one, so he turns off his car, puts on every layer he owns, and leans his seat back.

He thinks about calling Sam, and doesn’t.

Sam is somewhere in Missouri, wondering how much money to spend on a bus ticket. It’s going to take him a few more days to reach California, and he does not have enough cash to make the trip. The idea crosses his mind that he could rob someone. He knows he could, and Dean has done it before when money was tight (although John punished him terribly when he found out). Then he shakes off the thought. He’s going back to California, he tells himself, his real home, where he can be a real person again, and he doesn’t have to think about Dean anymore.

Besides, the only other person in the tiny bus station is a young, brown-skinned woman, sitting alone in the corner. Sam feels guilty that he would even think of scaring her like that.

It must be said that Meg is scared of very little, and could knock Sam on his ass if he tried it. But she doesn’t look the part, not in the least- she’s short, over a foot shorter than Sam, and she has straight black hair that she keeps at an unevenly-cut shoulder length. She has a strong, arched nose, and thick, arched brows, but her other features, her cheeks and mouth and eyes, are soft.

“Mind if I sit?” she asks, and sits next to him without waiting to hear a response.

“Sure,” Sam says. He shifts to give her room, and they sit quietly for a moment. “Merry Christmas.”

“I don’t like Christmas,” Meg says dismissively. She, in fact, also didn’t realize it was Christmas until just now, but she doesn’t tell Sam so.

Sam laughs. “Not really a fan of it either,” he admits. “I’m Sam.”

In general, Sam has good instincts. (More correctly, he has good psychic intuition, but he doesn’t quite understand that.) His instincts tell him now to trust Meg. His instincts are wrong, because Meg is more powerful than Sam by far. It’s simple work for her to lower his defenses, the same way it was simple work for Sam to lower Amy’s defenses, and Charlie the delivery guy’s, and Tom at the institution and the TSA men at the airport.

So they sit in a little bus station in Missouri. He tells her that he’s going home to California. She asks if that’s where his family is. He says no, and she nods like she understands.

When the bus comes, they board it together. Sam is protesting the whole way, but Meg just smiles. “My dad’s paying,” she insists, “and he won’t even notice.”

This is a lie, of course, but Meg is a very good liar. She didn’t used to be. Lying didn’t come naturally to her. But years of training have taught her better, and Meg is a very good liar.

Dean, on the other side of the country, is making little headway in the case. Even with the information John gave him, he’s having a hard time even finding evidence that a case exists. The locals are almost cartoonishly sweet, offering him apple pies and apple crumbles and cinnamon apple bread (“Picked from the orchards,” they say, smiling), but have no good information. He spends all day in the library, trying to build the victim pattern. It’s true, that couples tend to vanish near the town, and always in winter, but the articles he manages to uncover only ever reference  _ upstate New York,  _ because the couples and their obituaries show up in local papers all across the country: a couple from Burkitsville, Indiana, one from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one from Hanover, Massachusetts, on and on. Dean wonders despairingly how John even managed to discover a pattern like this, buried as it is. (The answer: John is an excellent hunter. He’s always searching out patterns like this, because sometimes they signify a demonic presence. This one doesn’t, which is why he passed it off, but never doubt that John is good at his job. Even now, he’s drawing closer to the demon he’s hunting for, and the demon has begun to take notice.)

He’s at Donny’s General Store buying food for the day, thinking aimlessly that he really should find a place to sleep other than his car, since it seems like he’s going to be here for a while. He’s become familiar with Donny at the register, who was effusively kind to him on the first day, and has become progressively more curt as the days tick by. Today, when Dean drops two wrapped sandwiches, two bottles of water, and a pack of cigarettes on the counter, Donny tells him his total without making any of the small talk he had earlier that week. Dean is wondering about this when the bell at the front door jingles and Donny’s face goes from politely neutral to disgusted.

It’s a little girl. She’s wrapped in a brown, threadbare coat, and her boots are too big for her. Dean watches her walk through the aisles slowly. She’s stealing, but she’s no good at it, her eyes flickering shiftily around as she keeps her arms folded tight over her coat.

“Bender!” Donny calls. Donny married a Jorgenson woman, and hates the Benders as much as any of them. “I hope you’re paying for that!”

Missy Bender makes an abortive rush for the door, but Donny is closer to it than she is, and he keeps one hand on the door.

“Come on, now,” Donny says, disapproving. “Pay up or give it back.”

Missy Bender scowls up at him, but slowly opens her coat. A couple vegetables, a sandwich, and some chocolate falls to the floor. She’s hollow-cheeked and hungry, and on impulse, Dean strides forward.

“Hey, man,” Dean says. “Give her a break.” He produces the credit card he’d used to pay for his own meal and hands it to Donny. “On me, all right?”

Donny looks at him, his gaze outright cold now. He takes the credit card, and goes behind the counter to ring up the food. Missy scoops up the food and runs back out into the cold, leaving the bell jangling behind her.

“Good to be good,” Donny remarks. “But not with the Benders.”

“Why’s that?” Dean asks lightly.

“They’re no good,” Donny says simply. He pauses. “As a matter of fact- can I see those pictures you showed me on Monday? Of your friends?”

Dean shows Donny a picture of Fred and Samantha Taylor, who disappeared last December. Donny nods. “I remember now,” he says. “Never came through here, but I did notice them talking to Edwin Bender last year.”

“Where do the Benders live?” Dean asks.

“Way off Applebark Lane,” Donny says. “On the forest’s side, not the orchard’s.”

“All right.” Dean pockets the picture and takes his food. “Thanks, man.”

Plainsoak is a beautiful little town, picturesque in its quaintness. All the streets have names like Applebark and Sweetwater and Honeysuckle, and they are lined with pale, pretty trees, pale, pretty houses all full of pale, pretty families. There is one library, one town hall, one bank, all built in the same pale marble, structures built with endless confidence in their eternality. Sometimes, in the mornings, Dean watches the steady flow of children through the pale, pretty streets, chattering and cheerful. He tries to pick out faces, figures that he must start to recognize some of them sitting at the same vantage point in the library window every day, but the faces look so much the same that he gives up more often than not.

But none of this is important. In Plainsoak, everything that matters tastes like apples. The orchard is huge, endless almost, and even in the winter, the air smells a little sweet-sharp, like the edged way the townspeople talk to him now, politeness in the hopes that he will leave their pale, pretty, eternal town alone.

Applebark Lane leads out of the town and to the orchard that sustains it. The apple trees look distinguished despite their frozen leaflessness, tall and straight in endless rows, nothing like the dark, tangled woods just across the road. Dean’s first thought is the same one that all visitors to this place have had, over the years: the wilderness of the forest looks monstrous next to the neatly pruned lines of the apple orchard.

It’s quiet in the woods, so quiet Dean feels too aware of his own heartbeat. The sun sets early in the winter, and the forest seems to go blue and hazy as the sky darkens. He’s glad he left the car parked on the paved street, despite the worn path wide enough for a car leading into the forest. He keeps just off the path, not wanting to be too readily visible.

He’s being followed. He can feel it. He pulls his gun, feels the familiar, comforting weight in his hands as he keeps walking. Through the trees, he sees the worn path widen to accommodate a little cabin, with a small black truck parked next to it.

Dean feels a blunt weight press against the small of his back, and he freezes.

“What you doing out here?”

“Let’s calm down,” Dean says.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. Why you got a gun? You hunting?”

_ Bismillah. _ It’s the Benders, he thinks, witches, probably, doing a ritual sacrifice. (He’s wrong, but I think you’re realizing that.)

“You better say you’re hunting,” Jacob Bender says. “‘Cause if you’re coming out here to rob us I swear I’ll shoot you.”

“Shoot me?” Dean blinks. “But not for hunting?”

“Well, you ain’t killed anything yet,” Jacob Bender says after a moment. “And you wasn’t going to, either, tramping around with that fruity little gun. No game out right now, anyway.”

Animals. He means hunting animals.

“Okay,” Dean says. (He’s trying not to rankle at Bender calling his gun fruity. It’s a custom engraved Colt.) “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not here to rob you. I just wanna ask some questions.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. The weight presses harder, and Dean realizes belatedly it’s a rifle. He still hasn’t seen the man’s face, and he curses himself for being so careless.

“You a cop?” Jacob Bender trusts cops about as much as Dean Winchester does, and for good reason. Plainsoak has never treated the Benders well.

Dean laughs and is rewarded with a hard nudge from the rifle. “No, man, just looking for somebody.”

Past the trees, the door to the cabin opens, and at the same moment, Dean and Jacob see Missy emerge.

“Jacob?” she calls. Her eyes are young but hawkish, and she recognizes Dean immediately. She moves almost ghostlike, too quick and quiet through the gnarled trees to stand in front of Dean. She studies him. “Why’d you buy that food for me?”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back,” Dean says through gritted teeth. Jacob, behind him, lowers the gun.

“That was you?” Jacob asks, his voice marginally softer. If there is anything in the world Jacob Bender would lower his gun for, it’s his little sister, fifteen and razor-sharp.

Jacob confiscates Dean’s gun but doesn’t check him for the knife in his belt. Dean is herded into the house, and he scans it quickly. Two rooms, no toilet, a tub in the corner. A few books, but normal books, like  _ Harry Potter  _ and  _ Lord of the Rings,  _ all with a faded library sticker on the spine. A few jars with things pickling, but they look like radishes and cucumbers, no eyes or fingers. Edwin Bender, a man in his fifties but who looks much older, is skinning a rabbit.

The Benders are not witches. Just a very poor family in a very small town.

Edwin recognizes Fred and Samantha Taylor, but has little to say about them. “There’s a couple visitors a year,” he says. “Never stay long.”

“Any this year yet?” Dean asks.

“Just you,” Edwin says. “And you’ll be leaving soon.” This is not a threat, only a statement of fact.

“Not yet,” Dean says, with certainty.

“Plainsoak don’t like strangers,” Jacob says skeptically. “Hell, barely likes us.”

Dean thinks about how he’d received three apple pies on his first day in town, the assured, nervous smiles that he’d be leaving soon, and today how Donny, unsmiling, shoved his sandwiches across the counter. He thinks about how there’s no motel inside a thirty minute drive.

“Where do strangers stay, usually?” he asks.

“With the Jorgensons,” Jacob says. “But I know you ain’t been staying with them.”

Edwin is a cynical man. He is too harsh a judge of character, too willing to turn his grizzled back on a stranger in fear of them. But Dean is just about Jacob’s age, and Missy likes him well enough, and something deep inside him softens just a bit, imagining Dean shivering in his car.

So Dean is allowed to stay with the Benders for the night. Edwin leaves when the sun has fully set, off to his night shift cleaning a truck stop miles out of town. With him, he brings the sandwich Dean bought earlier that day. Jacob lights a kerosene lamp, and Missy begins preparing the evening meal. She butchers the rabbit, and she and Jacob both laugh at how fascinated Dean is with the process. Dean chops the vegetables with a knife Missy offers him, and Jacob brings in a bucket of water from the pump just outside. Rabbit soup simmers on the gas stove for a while, and Jacob opens  _ Harry Potter _ and begins to read aloud as Missy eats her chocolate slowly.

Dean is almost lulled to sleep, lying on the rug (real bearskin, killed by Timothy Bender more than thirty years ago), smelling the soup cooking, listening to Jacob’s rough voice mellow as he reads. There’s a pang in his chest, so sudden it wakes him up, a wish that Sam was here for this. For the first time since the fight, he allows himself to think about it. He thinks about the anguish on Sam’s face as he’d shouted  _ I know you’re wondering what I am right now.  _ He thinks about John, the fanaticism that Dean isn’t too blind to see, the ruthlessness and the hatred for anything and everything unlike the apple-pie life that had burned up in 1983.

For the first time, doubt steals through him. John despises the supernatural, barely even has mercy for witches, and he has always had strict and specific rules for the men his sons were going to be. 

And Sam is many things, but he’s not a coward. Even as a child, with eyes a hundred years older than his body, darkness and monsters didn’t scare him. When their father was shouting and threatening with the belt, it was always Sam, never Dean, who shouted back. And when the first terrible secret was revealed, the full ride to Stanford, didn’t John say the cruelest things he could think of? Didn’t he punch Sam as hard and heavy as he could? When Dean stepped in to separate them, didn’t he hit Dean too?

Sam is not a coward or a fool, and he made these calculations a decade and a half ago. And just like Dean, he came to the slow and bone-chilling realization that, if John knew there was something inhuman under his roof, it would not survive unharmed for very long.

So Sam repressed it, convinced himself that the dreams were odd coincidences or fabrications. (If this sounds closer to something Dean would do than Sam, that’s because it is. Until he was about fifteen years old, Sam believed that Dean always knew best, and did his best to copy the ways in which Dean coped. Even now, Dean is shaking his head, denying, telling himself it’s just a curse that Sam’s blown out of proportion.) But Jess’s death was the worst nightmare Sam ever had. And when it happened, it became finally impossible to ignore reality: Sam isn’t human. 

Dean has inherited so much from his father; his car, his coat, his gun, his enduring hatred for monsters. With the clarity of hindsight, Sam half wishes he’d stayed long enough to find out what Dean thinks of him now. 

The truth, of course, is that Sam left because he couldn’t bear to find out what Dean thinks of him now. It is to be expected when conditional love fails. But to watch unconditional love falter, the only unconditional love Sam has ever known… he couldn’t bear it.

This is what Sam is thinking about when the bus rolls into San Francisco, half asleep with his neck cricked oddly against the seat. Meg, next to him, pokes him. “Hey, Sam,” she says. “Sam.”

“Meg,” Sam says, blinking awake. “Are we there yet?”

“I am,” she says. She gives him the sharp smile he’s come to know so well this week, the one that first looked incongruous in her soft face and now is so familiar he can’t imagine her any other way. “I get off here. Thought you’d want to say goodbye.”

“Oh.” Sam relaxes into his seat. “Okay. I’m glad I met you. Good luck with your dad.”

“Thanks.” Meg lingers for another moment. She’s unsure of herself.

“Actually-” Sam fumbles for a pen in his bag and then takes her hand. “Call me when you get settled, okay?” He scribbles his cell number into her palm.

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?” Meg asks wryly. “Seeing as you have no money and nowhere to stay?”

Sam closes her hand over his cell number. It feels safe there. “Call me when you get settled,” he suggests, “so I can call you back when I’m settled.”

“Okay,” Meg says. “Bye, Sam.”

“Bye, Meg,” Sam says, and then she’s gone.

(Really, she should have left a long time ago. She could have left a long time ago, when she pulled all the information about John that a stranger was ever going to get from Sam. But she didn’t. She liked the common kindnesses Sam seemed to think nothing of offering. She liked that it took him all evening to laugh, laugh like a dam breaking, for the first time. She liked how easy it was to make him smile after that.)

Sam doesn’t know any of that. He won’t for some time.

The bus meanders down to Palo Alto. The town is just as he left it. He’s been evicted from his apartment in his absence; he notices his own furniture on the street as he walks by. He goes to his old bank and is relieved to find that there’s still money in his account. He files for a new debit card, because he has no idea what happened to his.

Sam goes through the motions. He signs a month-to-month lease starting January, 2006. He takes the shuttle into Stanford to the registrar’s office. He’s too late to register for spring classes, but the financial aid woman assures him that although he’s lost a year’s worth of scholarship, the law school has grants he can apply for, and that he’ll be all set for summer classes. He takes the registration papers home, and they sit on his nightstand untouched. He gets a job as a car wash attendant. It’s funny, really. John brought his sons all over the country, setting up and taking down his household like it was a collapsible tent, and it’s these skills, this unfolding of the collapsible tent, that Sam uses to reestablish himself in Stanford.

“Are you settled?” Meg asks, her voice tinny over the phone.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam says. His apartment is small. He managed to salvage his couch off his old street corner, but not the bed. It was too big for him, anyway. He’s trawling Craigslist for a new one. “Haven’t talked to any of my old friends here yet, though.”

“There’s time,” Meg says. “Now that you’re away from your family.”

Sam’s stomach twists guiltily. “Yeah,” he says again. “I guess.”

Sam looks up the position he didn’t interview for two months ago. It’s been filled. It’s hard to believe how badly he wanted to be an assistant clerk at the Attorney General’s office just two months ago. He thinks about how derisive Dean would be, if he ever knew that Sam wanted to work for a prosecutor.

Sam never wanted to be a prosecutor, I can tell you that. He wasn’t terribly sure what he wanted to be, really, besides hirable. Most of the time, he wanted to be a tax lawyer, or a zoning lawyer, or something boring and easy and guaranteed to make him eighty thousand a year plus benefits. Very occasionally, he entertained the idea of being a corporate lawyer, of making obscene amounts of money off of misery, but he could never stomach the thought for long. Sometimes, when he thought about Dean, how he’d taken plea deals both times he’d been incarcerated, how Sam knew now that the charges could have been dismissed if they’d had the time and money, Sam thought about being a juvenile public defender. 

He doesn’t know what he wants now. He doesn’t call his old friends, but he has a dream about one of them, reading a newspaper dated FEBRUARY 13TH, 2006.

The only people Sam ever really speaks to are Meg and his boss at the car wash. It is important that you know this isolation is self-imposed. If Sam could stand it, he would register for his classes, reconnect with old professors with connections who could get him another paralegal or clerking job, call his friends and rebuild his life. But it isn’t his life, is it?

“I said really horrible things to my brother when I left,” Sam says.

“Call and say sorry.” Meg is no-nonsense like that.

“I can’t,” Sam says. “People don’t do that in my family.”  _ Besides,  _ he doesn’t say,  _ I’m afraid to find out that I’m not something he can love anymore. _

Meg thinks about that. The more Sam tells her, the more curious she becomes. “Well,” she says at last. “What do you do, then?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “What do you do, in your family?”

This surprises a laugh out of Meg. She doesn’t laugh often, and Sam smiles hearing it. “I just try to make up for it,” she says. “I just try to do better. My dad apologizes, but only when he’s wrong. He’s a pretty good dad, and I’m kind of a delinquent, so it’s usually me fucking up, not him.” Meg, for once, is not lying. But she is wrong.

Sam laughs. “Did you make up for buying a stranger’s bus ticket yet?” he asks.

“Are you kidding?” Meg says. “He’s just glad I’m back. He’ll probably give you a medal for making sure I got to California.”

Sam misses Dean. Dean misses Sam. Neither of them ever call the other.

In Plainsoak, Dean is still sleeping on the Benders’ bearskin rug. He’s adapted himself into their lives more easily than any of them expected. In the mornings, when Edwin returns to the house and Jacob is getting ready to leave for work at the orchard, Missy and Dean make breakfast. Jacob goes to work, and Dean brings Missy to school. He spends the day in the library or talking to various people in town, although almost nobody will talk to him. He has started to notice that people cross the street to avoid him. In the afternoons, Jacob brings Dean out to the woods, and they check the traps for rabbits and squirrels. Dean loves these afternoons, the long hours spent talking quietly with Jacob, for reasons he doesn’t understand. On the weekends, they bring the rifles, looking for deer. One deer, sold for parts at the town butcher’s, would feed the family for nearly two weeks, or buy enough kerosene to heat and light the house all month. But they rarely have much luck. (Dean still revels in the extra time with Jacob.)

In the evenings, Jacob reads aloud, his rough daytime voice giving way to something sweet. Missy sits cross-legged next to Dean where he stretches sleepily on the soft rug, and when he closes his eyes for the exciting parts, she pokes him in the side. When they finish  _ Harry Potter  _ (which none of them really understand, because it’s the fourth book and none of them have read any of the other ones), Jacob surveys their small library. Dean offers the tiny copy of  _ Frankenstein  _ that he stole from the occult shop in Iowa. Missy is enamored with the book, the crisp red leather binding, the etching in gold on the cover. She insists on reading for one evening, and Jacob and Dean listen, fond and amused. She surrenders it back to Jacob the following evening. She refuses to admit that it’s because she loves the way the words sound in his voice, claiming instead that she’d rather not get a sore throat.

It’s a difficult, small life. Missy has no friends at school, and sometimes she talks to Dean about this, knowing that she cannot talk to her father or brother. Dean remembers how John dealt with this, the brusque half-sympathetic  _ it is what it is.  _ He can’t bring himself to tell her such a thing, knowing how lonely she is, so he sits with her and is her friend, knowing all the while that he’ll have to leave soon. More pressing, though, is the material survival of the family, and this, at least, Dean understands, can do something about. Every day is a fresh exercise in finding enough food to sustain the entire family, and Dean throws himself into it wholeheartedly. There’s a cold front blowing down the East Coast, and when it hits, Edwin predicts grimly that the space heater won’t be enough to keep warm. Dean feels a little guilty when the thought crosses his mind that he wishes his childhood could have been more like this, both because he knows his father did his best and that the Benders struggle endlessly. But the wish doesn’t go away just because he pushes it aside.

One of Jacob’s coworkers at the orchard falls from a tree that he’s pruning and breaks his leg. Dean has been in town too long to use the fake credit card, so he takes the job (only temporarily, William Jorgenson keeps reminding him, only until Steven recovers).

He’s tried to go poking around the orchard before, but it’s patrolled day and night by town volunteers. This alone is enough to assure him that there’s something worth finding there, but Jacob, when asked, just shrugs and says it seems like a normal enough orchard to him.

It surprises Dean how much maintenance the trees need even in their dormant months. Acres and acres of trees, still and quiet, attended to by working men that scuttle through the rows like ants, centered on a small headquarters where the Jorgenson clan manages the orchard. Dean wishes he had a listening device, imagining himself a sort of James Bond, planting it in the office when William Jorgenson isn’t looking. But he doesn’t have a listening device. So instead, he lingers by the equipment warehouse joined to the office, hoping to catch a floating snippet of conversation.

It rarely works. The case stalls. Jacob makes his way through _Frankenstein,_ and Dean thinks about hating your creator. He thinks about it in the mornings when he drives his car down Applebark Lane, in the afternoons when he tucks his gun into his belt, in the evenings when he hangs his coat by the door.

January drags on. Dean’s birthday passes. He’s completely forgotten about it, but Sam hasn’t, and he stares at his cell phone (the new one, the one not registered to a fraudulent credit card) for hours wondering if he should call. He doesn’t. There’s a candlelight vigil being held for Jessica, too, but Sam doesn’t go to that, either. He would not be able to stand being with his old friends and his would-be mother-in-law, knowing what he knows, being what he is.

In New York, the forecasted cold snap grows closer. A couple drives through town, Gerard and May Dupont from Canada, on their way to visit their adult children in New Jersey. They’re lavished with apple pies and urged to stay a night or two, or three or four.

“Don’t come to work on the first of February,” William Jorgenson says. “The cold snap will be too dangerous to be outside in. Orchard will reopen on the second.”

“Why just the first?” Dean asks. “Is that gonna be the worst day? You got a contact in the sky the rest of us don’t know about?”

William Jorgenson glares at Dean. He utterly despises Dean, can’t figure out what the hell Dean is doing in Plainsoak. Dean just gives him a lazy, charming grin that inflames Jorgenson even further, and he scowls and storms off.

That night, Sam has a nightmare. He dreams of Dean, tied up and gagged and terrified, being dragged outside by a faceless man. Sam watches, paralyzed, as a knife opens Dean’s throat. The red blood steams as it spills onto hard, frozen ground. Sam looks up and sees a tall, bare tree.

The next day, he doesn’t think. He doesn’t call his boss or his landlord or even Meg. He books a flight to the nearest city to Plainsoak.

On the night of January 31st, many important things happen.

One: The temperature drops by fifteen degrees as the sun sets, and snow starts to fall. It isn’t a terrible snowfall, but it destroys what little visibility there is.

Two: Sam starts driving to Plainsoak.

Three: Gerard and May Dupont are drugged as they sleep in William and Shira Jorgenson’s guest bedroom. They are hog tied and locked inside the equipment warehouse, with two guards watching them.

Four: Just before Jacob and Edwin insulate the cabin as best they can, Dean leaves. The Benders beg him not to go, telling him not to be stupid, that he’ll freeze to death out there, but he leaves anyway. 

Five: After Jacob and Edwin insulate the cabin and fall asleep, Missy sneaks out. She does her best not to leave any holes in the insulation when she replaces it, partway succeeding. The lights of the Impala are visible distantly, and she follows them.

It’s cold. It is the second coldest night of the year.

The Impala inches along the road. Missy catches up to it soon enough, and she places one hand on its trunk so she can follow it. If Dean looked back, he would see her, but he’s too focused on getting to the edge of the forest without crashing the car.

Eventually, finally, they reach Applebark Lane. The car stops. Missy panics, and she shouts, “Dean!”

Dean freezes and swings around. He sees Missy, wrapped in several threadbare coats, standing behind the car, but he can see little more than her silhouette.

“Missy!” he yells back. The wind is carrying most of his voice away with it, but Missy can hear him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was worried about you!” Missy calls. She hesitates. “And I wanted to know what you were doing.”

Dean shakes his head. He can’t take her back, knows that time is already wasting, and he won’t let her walk by herself, what with the cold and the snow and the darkness and the deep black woods. So Dean takes Missy’s hand firmly.

“Don’t let go of me,” he tells her. She nods. She clutches his hand, and although it’s an evil cold night out, Missy cannot feel afraid.

Together, they go into the orchard. Dean’s right hand is gripping Missy’s, and his left hand is stretched out, touching the trees as they pass them. He counts the trees as they pass.  _ One, bismillah. Two, bismillah. Three, bismillah. _

This goes on for what feels like forever, to Missy. Then Dean pulls Missy closer to him and turns left, hoping fervently that he’s counted right. He starts walking, counting the trees as they go.

“What are we doing?” Missy asks.

“Not now,” Dean barks. “When we get inside.”

Missy falls quiet. Dean counts the trees. Then he takes a deep breath and pulls Missy closer. She’s pressed against his side now, his arm around her shoulder.

“Take steps with me, you understand?” Dean says to her. "Follow me exactly.”

Missy nods, but he doesn’t see it. He takes a deep breath and lets his hand fall from the tree. Slowly, purposefully, trying not to let the wind sway him, Dean starts walking. Missy mimics his step.

When they reach the building that Dean knows is at the center of the orchard, he wants to cry with relief. He lays one hand on the wall and keeps walking until he feels the ridge of the doorway. Then he pulls the gun from his pocket and uses it to bang on the door.

Inside, Neil and Michael Jorgenson jolt from their doze. They exchange glances, and then look at the door. They know it’s pitch black outside; they know because they, their father, their uncle, and their cousin dragged Gerard and May Dupont through the orchard not two hours before.

“Who’s there?”

In his best approximation of William Jorgenson’s gravelly voice, Dean yells back, “Open up, you piece of shit!”

It’s a guess that William is an asshole to his family, but a good one. Neil, wary of pissing off his father, removes the insulation from the door and cracks it open. Dean shoots him in the calf.

Neil falls back, screaming, and Michael, in terror, throws his gun up. But he isn’t experienced with it, and before he can fumble the safety off, Dean is a foot in front of him, muzzle pressed to his chest, finger hovering over the trigger.

“Drop the gun,” Dean says. He can barely feel his face for cold, and snow is still blowing inside.

Michael drops the gun. Missy darts forward and picks it up. Her small hands are too numb to handle the gun properly, but it doesn’t matter. Neil and Michael are not formidable opponents, having never killed a human being that was capable of fighting back.

“Close the door,” Dean says. “Now.”

Missy’s eyes are flitting between the tied-up couple in the back of the warehouse and Neil, still howling on the floor. She steps forward, and Dean is about to tell her to get back, but she just kicks Neil’s gun away from him.

Michael closes the door and stuffs the spaces with insulation. The heat is blasting from a vent in the ceiling. The feeling is prickling back to life in Missy and Dean’s cold hands.

“Missy.” Dean gestures with the gun to the far corner of the warehouse. “There’s rope over there on the bottom shelf. Bring it over here.” Missy obeys without a word, and Dean is feeling horribly guilty about dragging her into this, about scaring her, but Missy isn’t scared. In her mind, Dean has already been canonized as the kind of hero that Jacob has read to her about since she was a child, and she holds an unshakeable belief that she will never be in danger while she is with him. This is untrue, of course; she’s in great danger even now, and Dean will never be a storybook hero. But a child’s imagination is strong, and a child’s love is stronger.

Dean ties up Michael and Neil and cuts Gerard and May free. They slump to the floor, still dead to the world.

“All right,” Dean says, turning to Michael and Neil. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to tell you what I think is happening, and you’re going to tell me how right I am. Okay?”

Neil has passed out. Michael nods.

“Fertility ritual,” Dean guesses. “One man, one woman, slaughtered to an idol on the last snow of the year to bring back the spring. Right?”

Michael blinks. “Yeah,” he says, a little wonderingly. “Except, not on the last snow. It’s the coldest night of the year.”

“Shit.” Dean frowns. “How do you know? Does the god tell you? Or whatever it is?”

“Our god, yes,” Michael says. “She gives us a signal seven nights before the coldest night of the year.”

“What’s the idol?” Dean asks. “Is it that scarecrow by the road? This building?”

“As if I would tell you,” Michael scoffs.

“Fair enough,” says Dean after a moment. “And what if you don’t?”

“The orchard dies,” Michael says. He’s overcome with a burst of cockiness. “But it won’t. We’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, asshole.”

Dean snorts. “I’ve killed a lot of things that have been killing longer than I have,” he says. “Never saves ‘em.”

“That’s what you’re doing here,” Missy says wonderingly. “You didn’t know those people from last year. You were looking for who killed them.”

“Right in one, kiddo,” Dean says, smiling briefly at her.

Missy looks down at Michael, who is staring at her with hate in his face. “If you kill the orchard,” she says slowly, “Plainsoak dies too.”

Michael laughs. “Look at that,” he says. “Even a Bender knows something.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” Dean snaps. He looks at Missy, softening. “Do you really want to save Plainsoak? After all these people put you and your family through?”

“No,” Missy says quietly. “But where will Jacob work?” She doesn’t really expect an answer, and Dean doesn’t have one. She just keeps watching Michael.

The night passes like this. The snow stops falling. When the sun rises, Sam continues his insistent, slow drive to Plainsoak. The stolen car isn’t built to move through several inches of snow, but Sam doesn’t care, just wills it forward mile by reluctant mile.

Sam reaches Plainsoak. When he recognizes the shape of Impala pulled over by the orchard, blanketed with snow, his heart sinks. He looks into the orchard, sees the endless, neat lines, and remembers his vision.

The orchard is easy to get lost in, and in the middle of a cold snap, this would be nothing short of a death sentence. Sam thinks of how his brother had looked, a bright red smile across his throat, and walks into the orchard.

This is momentous for many reasons, but I will focus only on one. This is the first time in his life that Sam has used his psychic abilities on purpose. As he walks, he concentrates hard on the image of his dying brother. It fills him with such grief, such unimaginable dread, that power starts to muster hot through his blood. He starts running when he sees the gray building through the trees.

Dean is not sure how to receive Sam, remembering their last, ugly words to each other more than a month before. But Sam is so happy and so relieved to see him, hugging him so tightly his ribs almost crack, that Dean can’t help but laugh. Inanely, he notices that Sam’s hair needs a trim.

“How’d you get here?” he asks.

“Stole a car,” Sam replies.

“That’s my boy,” Dean says. He laughs again, and it makes Sam laugh, too.

But there’s no time for much more of a reunion than that. The hunt isn’t over.

On Dean’s instructions, Sam brings Gerard and May out of the orchard and drives them back to town, where their car is parked. He sits and waits until they’re out of sight before turning back towards the orchard.

Dean is searching the warehouse and the small adjoining office building for any information on what the idol might be. He will have no luck, because the Jorgensons keep their history locked tightly in the volumes of their private library. But still, he searches, and does not notice that Michael has slipped his ties.

Michael overpowers Missy. Pressing a gun to her head, he forces Dean to give up his weapons. Michael calls his family, and by the time Sam returns to Applebark Lane, there are several new cars parked by the orchard, and four Jorgenson men have hogtied Missy and Dean in preparation for the sacrifice. It’s around this time that Edwin and Jacob Bender wake to find Missy gone, and then there isn’t a single family on either side of Applebark Lane that isn’t panicking.

Sam brushes the snow off of the Impala, picks the lock, and starts digging through the trunk for weapons. The Benders’ old truck comes crashing out of the woods, and Sam brings up his shotgun without having to think.

“Who is that!” he yells.

“Where’s my fucking daughter?” Edwin yells back. He emerges from the truck with his rifle lifted and aimed.

“Your daughter.” Sam remembers the scruffy little girl from the warehouse, clinging to Dean like she’d never let go. “Missy?”

“What did you do with her?” Edwin snarls.

“I didn’t do anything!” Sam shouts. “She’s with Dean!”

“Yeah? What did he do?” Edwin demands. Jacob looks warily between Sam and Edwin and lowers his own gun.

“Dad,” he says.

“He’s trying to protect her,” Sam says, struggling to get his anger under control. He lowers his gun, a show of good faith. “And I’m trying to protect Dean. He’s my brother, all right? And it’s not us you have to worry about.”

“Dad,” Jacob says. “This is William Jorgenson’s truck.”

Edwin, finally, lowers his gun. The three men stare at each other, and independently decide that they’re better off working together than apart.

In the warehouse, the Jorgenson men sit, counting the hours until sunset. The sacrifice won’t work until nightfall, although Michael would be more than willing to slit Dean’s throat this second. Dean knows this. If he didn’t have Missy to protect, he’d be goading Michael into making a mistake right now. 

But Missy is here, small and shaking. Dean tries his best to shield her from the Jorgensons’ view with his body, to assure her, to comfort her,  _ everything is gonna be okay,  _ and he despises himself for dragging her into the muck with him.

There’s a cold tension to the air, the sharp-sweet smell of fear. Michael tries to crack a joke: “Probably the easiest one yet, you know? No one’ll come looking for a Bender and a camel jockey.” It earns him a few humorless smiles, but nobody believes him, so nobody laughs.

There’s a gunshot outside. Everyone startles except Dean.

“Frank,” William says, his voice low. “Go see what’s going on.”

“William,” George says uneasily. He fears for his son, who is young and a little thickheaded, but William quells George with a look. There’s a chain of command in this family, and George, as the patriarch’s younger brother, does not have the authority to tell William what to do.

So Frank goes out. He doesn’t come back.

One of the windows in the adjoined office building shatters. It’s audible, even from the warehouse, and almost immediately, cold air begins to seep through the complex.

The Jorgensons are aware they’re being hunted. But they have never been hunted before, and have certainly never been hunted by something like Sam.

When Sam bursts into the warehouse, Edwin and Jacob at his back, his fury fills the entire room like something alive, heavy and suppressive and dreadful. Dean can’t speak. He looks into his brother’s burning eyes, and hates himself when the first thought that crosses his mind is  _ monster. _

“I left your man tied up somewhere in the orchard,” Sam says. His voice seems too loud, too strong. “Took his shoes, his coat, and his gloves. It’s ten below. If you don’t go find him, he’ll freeze to death in ten minutes.”

George drops his gun immediately.

“George,” William says. “It’s a trap.”

Frank, in fact, has all his clothes on, and is tied up in the attic of the office building. But the very air around Sam seems to dampen, to curl black and evil off of him, and George believes wholeheartedly that this man is capable of murder.

You see, when Sam is smiling, negotiating, doing his best to ingratiate himself, his psychic manipulation makes him the most likable man in the world. But when he is rageful and snarling, when he means to terrify, he becomes the worst thing his beholder has ever seen.

“Fuck you, William,” George says. His voice is shaking. “I’m going to find my son.”

George doesn’t go through the office building, not wanting to pass too close by Sam. Instead, he opens the door leading directly outside, and freezing air floods the warehouse. As he closes the door behind him, Sam turns his gaze to the remaining Jorgenson men. Neil is unconscious on the floor, pale with blood loss. Only William and his oldest son Michael remain.

“You’re outnumbered,” Sam says with an awful smile on his face. There is something freeing about letting the darkest part of you into the light of day.

In the end, Sam uses no violence to save his brother. He and Edwin keep their guns trained on the Jorgensons as Jacob cuts Missy and Dean loose. Against four armed men, the Jorgensons finally surrender. 

“We still need to find the idol,” Dean says. He’s thoroughly shaken. More by Sam than anything else.

Sam remembers his vision. “It’s one of the trees,” he says.

Dean doesn’t ask how Sam knows. “We’ll burn them all, then,” he says grimly.

Jacob begins to protest, but Missy tugs at his sleeve, shaking her head. The Benders keep watch over the Jorgensons as Dean and Sam take cans of gasoline from the warehouse and carry them outside.

“Think it’ll be enough?” Dean calls to Sam over the wind.

Sam is staring up at a tree. It’s taller and straighter than the rest of them, its branches arcing regally over its neighbors. He’s tired from all he’s done today, but if he wasn’t, he might be able to feel the power pulsing through its roots.

“Yeah,” he says. “It will.”

The orchard burns. Dean and Sam get everybody, even Frank, out of the central buildings and back to Applebark Lane. 

They’ve forgotten George. He dies out there, alone, lungs full of smoke, burning hot in the middle of a deadly cold front. Dean and Sam never find out.

Sam hands Jacob his new debit card. “Here,” he says. “There’s some money still in the account. My PIN is zero one two four.” January 24th is Jessica’s birthday, and Dean’s too. Dean suddenly remembers that he’s twenty seven years old.

“Won’t you need it?” Jacob asks, floored.

“Just take it,” Sam insists.

The Benders will move to Rochester a week later. Missy will watch Plainsoak fade behind them, a few blackened branches still reaching up towards an iron gray sky.

Dean and Sam don’t speak, not really, not until they’re miles away, not until the cold front passes. Sam calls Meg, but the number has been disconnected.

Sam finds himself unable to sleep, in the aftermath. He tosses and turns, watching the ugly patterned wallpaper of the motel room for hours. He calls Meg again, knowing the number is disconnected. He steals one of Dean’s cigarettes, and wakes Dean up when he starts coughing on the taste.

“Dude.” Dean sits up, looking across the dark room blearily. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Sam feels silly. He puts the cigarette out.

“Are you okay, man?” Dean asks.

“Do you know how I found you?” Sam says. “I dreamed that those pagan freaks killed you.”

Dean says nothing.

“I stopped it,” Sam says. He grinds the cigarette against the ashtray, although it’s already gone out. “I saved you.”

Dean says nothing.

“That means I could have saved her too.” Sam crushes the cigarette butt, leaving nothing but torn paper and shreds of tobacco. For the first time, he thinks the words clearly, purposefully:  _ I am a monster. _

Dean still says nothing. But he gets up and pulls Sam into a tight, fierce hug. Sam turns his face into Dean’s shoulder, like he’s still small, like he still believes Dean could protect him from anything. 

Somewhere, a thousand miles away, John Winchester tracks a man with yellow eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

John Winchester is under no illusions about his own vindictiveness.

Let me distinguish between pettiness and vindictiveness. John is not petty. Many times in his life, he’s slunk off with his tail between his legs after losing a fight. Sometimes, even, he’s had to pull Dean from the fray, still snarling and kicking despite a bloodied face or broken hand, because although Dean is not vindictive in the least, he is a very petty man. There’s no shame in losing a small fight, and John knows this. 

But- and he takes a certain measure of pride in this- he has the memory of an elephant. There is no slight that goes unrecorded, no grudge that fades with time. And while there is no shame in losing a small fight, there is no greater shame than losing a big one, and for victory he would give up anything. (He never talks about his service in Vietnam and never will. But you should know that this immovable, patient vengefulness stems mostly from those bloody years.) The forgiveness of John Winchester is a hard-won thing. Few people alive have known it, least of all his children. 

I say all this to help you understand John’s state of mind when he sends Dean coordinates to a town in Pennsylvania. He isn’t gleeful when he does it. But although the affront Dean committed is sixteen years old, he has not answered well enough for it, not as far as John is concerned.

They’re in a Goodwill. It’s six in the evening, but the sun sets early in the winter, and it feels later than it is. Sam left all his clothes on the far side of the country, and when Dean asked, hesitant, if he was planning to go back, Sam just shook his head.

He has his reasons. But I’m not going to talk about them right now. Today, we’re talking about Dean.

So. They’re in a Goodwill. Sam flips idly through long sleeved shirts on the L rack as Dean shuffles loudly around behind him. They do this often, but usually, it’s because they’ve torn or bled all over their clothes, not because they’ve abandoned a life in California.

“Dude,” Dean says, and Sam can hear the grin in his voice before he turns around. “You  _ need _ to get this.”

It’s a black t-shirt with red lettering on it that says I FUCKED THE JERSEY DEVIL AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID SHIRT.

“I’ve never even seen a Jersey Devil,” Sam says. “You guys left me in the motel for that one.”

“Fine,” Dean says, folding the shirt carefully over his arm. “I’ll get it then.”

Sam looks absently through the rack in front of him. “I knew you were gone too long.”

“Hey,” Dean says. “You do some crazy shit for pussy when you’re fifteen.”

Sam laughs, and the old woman standing a few feet away throws them a dirty look. Sam tries to look apologetic, but can’t really manage it.

“Do Jersey Devils fuck? Like, do they have the equipment?” Dean muses as he takes a brown woolen sweater from the rack.

“They reproduce somehow,” Sam says. He pulls a plain long sleeved gray shirt from the rack. “Think this would fit me?”

“It’ll be a couple inches short on your arms,” Dean says, looking critically at the shirt. “But try it on. And this sweater, too, winter’s not over.” Then he adds, “Aren’t they a thought manifestation, though? Only show up when people believe in them?”

“So now the question is, does the lore say that Jersey Devils can fuck.” Sam takes the sweater. It’s ugly, but it’s warm, and it will fit Sam better than anything else they buy here tonight. “Aren’t most monsters thought manifestations? I feel like I read that somewhere.”

“Sure. I don’t fucking know. I don’t really get thought manifestations.” Dean wanders off towards the jeans section. He picks up a pair with JUICY written in sequins across the ass and waves them over his head gleefully at Sam. “You’d look great in these.”

“Thanks,” Sam deadpans. “What’s not to get?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Dean says, returning the jeans to the rack. “How come it only works for bad things? Like, if millions of people believing in something could make it real, why isn’t-” He almost says God, but catches himself, knowing how Sam has always clung to the idea of God. “-Santa real? How come he’s not dropping presents under my tree every year?”

“Because you’re a bad person,” Sam replies. He pulls a shirt off the rack. “Do you like this?”

“Yeah, it looks warm,” Dean says. “And fuck you.”

It’s worth noting that they’re on almost opposite sides of the store, calling over to each other about monsters and Santa and weather-appropriate clothing. There’s only two other people here, a cashier who is listening to Britney Spears on twelve-dollar earbuds, and an old woman who is thinking that old people get a pretty bad rap for acting crazy in public, considering that she’s listening to the most insane conversation she’s ever heard in her life.

Dean’s cell phone pings with a text as they’re checking out. He doesn’t recognize the number when he glances down, so he just shoves it back in his pocket and laughs as Sam hands the Jersey Devil shirt to the cashier with a perfect poker face.

“Gag gift?” the cashier asks, scanning the t-shirt.

“No,” Sam says. “Wearing it to my brother’s wedding.”

“Okay,” the cashier says boredly. She holds up another shirt, this one emblazoned with the words WEREWOLF BOYFRIEND. Dean doubles over laughing, and Sam grins, victorious.

“That’s what my brother’s wearing,” he says.

“Your total is twenty six forty two,” the cashier says. She doesn’t think that Sam is funny, but Sam doesn’t care, because he’s making Dean laugh and, to him, that’s the important part. Dean reaches into his pocket, past a couple cassette tapes and a penknife that he’d liked too much to pay for, and withdraws the money to pay.

They’re still chuckling when they get to the parking lot. Dean opens his phone to check the text, and his smile evaporates when he sees the coordinates and the one word accompanying it:  _ shtriga _ .

After Dean tells Sam, they almost fight.

“We’re not doing this again,” Sam says. He can already feel heat creeping up the back of his neck in anger, but he pushes it back. He doesn’t want this to escalate again. “Dean? We’re not doing this again.”

“We have to,” Dean answers, on autopilot.

“For Dad?” Sam asks. “Dean, come on. I don’t want to do this again.”

Dean’s hands flex where they’re gripping the steering wheel. He doesn’t want to do this again, either. “I know you don’t trust Dad,” he says, his voice tight. “Do you trust me, though?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He’s being honest, even if it took him just a second too long to answer.

“This is a case we didn’t finish, a while back,” Dean says. “I fucked it up.” He was a child, but he doesn’t mention this, knowing that Sam will make excuses for him. He doesn’t want excuses. He wants to fix his mistake, and so even though this feels like a cruel twist of a knife, it also feels like forgiveness.

Or, at least, a chance at it.

So they drive down to Pennsylvania. The air between them is still a little thick. Both of them know how easy it would be to get in a fight, how simple it would be to shatter the tenuous peace that’s formed. But they also remember the cold and the loneliness of the last month, and so they don’t fight. 

It’s drizzling when they reach Fitchburg, a cold, wet mist that gathers in their eyelashes and makes their hands icy. “Think they sell good cheesesteaks?” Dean asks as they head into a deli.

“That’s Philly,” Sam answers.

“All these stupid little East Coast cities look the same,” Dean gripes.

They eat their cheesesteaks leaning back against the hood of the parked car. They aren’t that good, and Dean’s wishing that he didn’t get his hopes up. Sam’s eye keeps straying across the street, to the school.

“No kids,” he remarks. Dean follows his gaze. It’s true. The playground is completely empty, although it’s just past four in the afternoon.

“Shtriga usually goes after kids,” he says. He takes another bite of the sandwich, but he can’t really taste it anymore. “Half of ‘em will be laid up in the hospital by now.”

Sam looks at Dean. “How long ago was this case?” he asks, voice carefully measured. “I don’t remember it. Was it while I was at school?”

“No,” Dean says without elaborating. He balls up the empty foil wrapper and throws it at the garbage can. He misses.

Sam hesitates. He wants to press, wants to tell Dean to open up so Sam can help him, but he already knows Dean would point out the hypocrisy before admitting anything.

“Pick that up,” Sam says. “This is the kind of place that would fine us for littering.”

“Sure thing, little brother,” Dean says, eyes wide with false earnestness. He picks up the crumpled foil and tosses it at Sam. “Right in the trash.”

“Funny.” Sam kicks the garbage back towards Dean, and Dean flashes a grin at him before getting up. 

“Let’s go,” he says. “We got hospital records to break into.”

It’s easy to walk into the hospital wearing the cheap suits they keep for this purpose, easy to flash laminated CDC ID cards that they’d printed at a copy shop nine blocks west. Sam always thinks it’s going to be hard to slide back into old habits, but it never is, really.

“Confidence, Sammy,” Dean always said, his face lit with that broad grin that’s sometimes slimy and sometimes endearing. “Act like you’re supposed to be there, and pretty soon everyone else will think so too.”

Neither of them are prepared to actually see the children. There’s five of them, all in adjacent rooms, all in comas, all sallow-faced and unbearably small in their beds. One of them, a young boy named Eli, they will not be able to save. Seven years old and small for his age, with dark lashes that fan over fair cheeks and thick dark hair that’s a little tangled. He looks so much like Sam did, when he was younger, that Dean is almost nauseous watching him hovering so close to death.

“Doctors?” Dr. Hydeker’s voice is almost gentle, but it isn’t quite. She watches them with ice-blue eyes.

“Apologies,” Sam says. He follows her down the hall, one hand ghosting over Dean’s elbow. It’s a silent check-in, one honed by years of looking out for each other.  _ You good? _

Dean doesn’t answer, because he isn’t. He just follows them down the hall to Bethany’s room.

“The last one,” Hydeker says grimly. “She came in three days ago.”

“Davis, Bethany,” Sam reads off the chart. “Carl Davis’s sister?”

“Siblings,” Hydeker says, nodding. “Not surprising. Everyone being in the same house, and all. The three girls up there are all sisters, too, and Eli’s brother-” Hydeker’s mouth closes, and she takes a breath before going on. “He passed yesterday.”

“How long had he been here?” Sam asks.

“Six days,” Hydeker says. “There were two other kids, too, brother and sister. Both gone within a week.”

Dean has always hated these cases the most. The ones where children die. They all start to wear Sam’s face, Sam as he was, bright eyes and scraped up knees and baby fat that wasn’t fully gone until the second time Dean got out of prison.

But all the guilt and anxiety knotting his stomach shows only as a tension in the fix of his jaw, a wariness in his eyes. No one knows him well enough to recognize it except Sam, and even Sam can’t quite pinpoint it, not with all the practice Dean has had convincing Sam that nothing’s wrong.

“So,” Sam says. “Shtriga. What’s the story?”

They’re on their way to check the Davis house, which has stood empty for three days. They don’t especially need to check, because their work is cut out for them. It’s rare to have such a big head start on a case like this. But the sun’s gone down, the library and internet cafes are closed, and Dean is unwilling to turn in so early.

“Albanian demon,” Dean says. “Feeds off of human life force for its power. Usually kids. Usually presents as an old woman with pale eyes.”

Sam snorts. “So every white woman in town is a suspect?”

“Always be suspicious of white women, Sam,” Dean says seriously. He parks the car down the street, and they both shuck off the jackets and ties of their cheap suits. It’s still raining.

“How do we kill it?” Sam asks. 

“A couple different exorcisms work,” Dean says. He makes quick work of the lock on the front door, and Sam casts one more quick look up the street before they slink into the house. “A Muslim one. A Catholic one.”

“Holy water?”

“Depends on the exorcism we use.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Sam opens the door to a bedroom. It’s Carl’s. There are toys scattered across the floor, a Superman poster on the wall, a comforter with a racecar pattern crumpled on the bed. Dean crosses the room to the window. Behind the curtains, on the outer sill, there’s the burnt black handprint of something with claws.

“They’re impossible to track,” Dean says, staring down at the handprint. “It’s not the kind of demon that possesses human beings, so there’s no sulfur smell. You can only trap it in one place on Easter Sundays. Usually it takes a couple months to identify it and kill it. Protection charm isn’t complicated, but hard to find ingredients for. Fucking bitch of a hunt.” Dean knows all this despite never in his life having killed a shtriga. John, in the aftermath of the botched hunt, made Dean recite over and over every way to trap and kill a shtriga, had him run miles and do pushups and go days without sleep, taught him for the first time how to make a sawed off shotgun. 

“Protection charms like what?” Sam comes to a stop next to Dean and looks down at the handprint. He’s never seen one before.

“After they feed, they go into the woods to vomit up the shit they can’t process,” Dean says. “The blood and all that. If you can find it, you cover a silver coin in the blood and wrap it up in cloth. Sew it into a backpack or a coat or something. Shtriga can’t touch it.”

A memory wafts up between them, smelling a little acrid. Sam carried a little pouch, clumsily sewed, in his pocket for almost two years, and John used to yell at him if he ever asked what it was for or left it behind. Then, when Sam was nine years old, he ran away, and lost the pouch somewhere in northern Nebraska. Sullen in the backseat of the Impala as John drove him home, anticipating the ass-whooping he was going to get, Sam thought mutinously that he was never going to carry the damn thing again, no matter what John said. But by then, John had bigger things to worry about, and the charm was forgotten about.

It clicks then, for Sam. He doesn’t know the details, true. He doesn’t remember that night, doesn’t remember that he was rereading an old X-Men comic that Dean had dog-eared to death, doesn’t remember that Dean heated canned chili for dinner, doesn’t remember that Dean told him firmly to keep the door locked and go to bed early before he snuck off to the arcade. He doesn’t remember how it felt when the shtriga settled over him like a bad dream. He doesn’t remember John blowing the thing away with salt, or how John clutched him close like he was still afraid. But he doesn’t need to remember any of that to understand what’s happening now, because it wasn’t the last time that John punished Dean for failing to protect his brother.

“Dean,” Sam says, without knowing what he wants to tell him.

“Sam,” Dean returns. He turns around and walks out, and Sam, after another moment, follows him.

Sam lingers outside for a moment as Dean goes inside to book a room. Dean, relieved that Sam isn’t pressing him about the case, doesn’t question it. Sam leans against the car in the thin, freezing rain, feeling his cheap shirt dampen. He thinks of Jess, who didn’t know that Sam has a brother. He thinks of Dean, who didn’t know that Sam isn’t human. For no reason at all, he thinks of Meg.

She was his only friend, that long month in California. He calls her, although he knows that the number is disconnected. But he wants to talk, for once in his life, without worrying that he’ll uncover some open wound of a secret. He wants it with a fierce desperation that embarrasses him, wants trust and openness and to not be afraid of losing what little he has. He closes his phone without listening to the error message and follows Dean inside.

“That kid was such a dick,” Dean says, comically furious as they drop their bags to the floor of the motel room. 

“The kid at the desk?” Sam asks skeptically. “He was like twelve, Dean.”

“He called us queens,” Dean says.

Sam actually laughs. “What? Who says that anymore? What fucking year is it?”

“That’s your issue with this?” Dean asks. He kicks off his shoes, still muttering. “Two queens. Two queen  _ beds _ , you little shitface-”

“Stop being homophobic, Dean,” Sam says, opening his laptop. He’s going to spend three hours trying to figure out how to track a shtriga. He will fail. If there was a way, Dean would know it. 

“I’m not homophobic,” Dean insists. “I think all sex is great. Created equal. I just don’t want to get called a fruit by every little-”

“A  _ fruit?”  _ Sam looks up, grinning. “Seriously, dude, are all the slurs you know from forty years ago?”

This is how it is between them. They think heavily about everything they won’t say to each other, and when they joke it feels just fine even though it’s not.

Sam falls asleep before Dean that night. Dean took pains with the salt lines at the door and windows, triple-checking them as if a child-killer is going to come after a twenty two year old man. Still, he doesn’t mention it, still hasn’t told Sam about the first shtriga hunt that landed them here. 

That night, sixteen years ago, Dean came back to the motel flush with candy and a leftover arcade token to find his father sitting at Sam’s bedside holding a shotgun. 

“He could have died, Dean.” John wasn’t crying, or even shaky. He never was, not in front of his children.

“I was only gone for a little-”

“And he could have died,” John snapped. “Would it have been worth it? The movie or the arcade or wherever the hell you were? Would it have been worth it if you were gone and the shtriga killed him?”

“No.” Dean was crying, big silent tears rolling down his cheeks. He hated himself for it. “Is he okay?”

“Yes,” John said, and his voice had not softened. “I got here in time. You didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” The hard metal ridges of the arcade token were digging into his fist, but he couldn’t feel it, waves of panic rolling over him like the danger was still there. He stared at Sam, fast asleep and looking a little paler than usual. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough.” John stood, and set the shotgun down on the stool with more gentleness than he would ever show Dean again. “Do you think this is a joke, what I do? When I tell you to protect your little brother, do you think I’m kidding around?”

“No.”

“No, sir,” John said.

“No, sir,” Dean said. He felt like he was going to throw up. He was certain John was going to use the belt on him. It didn’t happen often, but the fear of it was enough to tie Dean in knots.

John didn’t use the belt that night. If you asked him, John would say he didn’t punish Dean at all, and Dean, in retrospect, is actually grateful.

“You are going to sit here with this gun,” John said, pointing to the stool. “All night, until Sam wakes up. You are going to make sure the shtriga doesn’t come back for him.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said, relief flooding him.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” John said. “And then you’re going to start helping out around here a little more. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said, nodding frantically.

It was Dean’s idea to make the charm for Sam. It was the last thing they did before they left town. Dean sat in the front seat of the Impala for the first time, John’s journal open on his lap, sewing a little pouch for the bloodstained silver coin. He kept pricking himself with the needle, his fingers clumsy with exhaustion, but when he finished, John looked satisfied.

“Good,” John said. “Finish reading what’s in there on shtrigas. The sooner you can recite it all without looking, the sooner you can get some sleep.”

So began Dean’s life as a hunter, sixteen years ago. Always and only, it was for Sam.

The next morning, the little boy at the front desk is crying. His name is Ben Roberts, and he is trying very hard not to cry, so you could be forgiven for missing it if you were walking too fast. It’s not the chest-hollow wailing of a grieving mother or the shuddering sobs of a scared child. It’s silent, resigned, hopeless. Tears cloud his vision stubbornly, and he takes deep breaths but can’t stop them from squeezing from the corner of his eyes. His face feels stiff with salt, and his lashes are clumped together. For about two hours now, tears have been rolling silently down his cheeks.

“Whoa, kiddo,” Dean says. “What’s wrong?”

He’s expecting to hear that Ben got in a fight or got his lunch money stolen or something. He is not expecting Ben to look up at him with red-rimmed eyes and say, “Fuck off.”

Dean exchanges a look with Sam, who’s wondering why Dean doesn’t like this kid, seeing as Dean acted just like him at this age. “Jeez,” Dean says. “Fine. Where’s your mom? Radiator was working like shit last night.”

“She’s not here,” Ben says, and hates himself for how his voice wobbles.

At once, Sam and Dean go from vaguely amused to acutely concerned, too-familiar as they are with what it’s like to be a child alone in a motel.

“Do you know where she is?” Sam asks gently. He leans forward slightly, just far enough forward to see an unopened sandwich sitting on the desk. Ben hasn’t eaten today.

Ben shrugs, staring determinedly at his keyboard. “Hospital,” he mumbles. “With Asher.”

“Who’s-”

“Little brother,” Dean says. He lays one hand on Sam’s shoulder.  _ Let me handle this one.  _ “Right, buddy?”

“I’m not your buddy,” Ben says defiantly, but his voice cracks. He wipes his face, angry with himself for crying. “My name is Ben.”

“All right, Ben,” Dean says. “Is your brother sick? Wouldn’t wake up this morning, no matter how hard you shook him?”

“Yeah,” Ben says slowly. Despite himself, he feels a wisp of hope. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

Dean and Sam exchange another look. “We’ve got a feeling,” Dean says. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo, all right? Just stay here and-”

“No!” Ben shouts, getting to his feet. “Mom said the same thing, and that was hours ago! I don’t want to just sit here listening to people bitch about their radiators! Tell me what’s wrong with him!”

Sam is trying to think of a way to convince Ben to calm down when Dean shrugs and says, “Okay. Come on, kiddo, can you show us where your brother slept last night?”

Ben leads them to a room on the far end of the motel. Sure enough, on the outer windowsill, there’s a black, clawed handprint burned into the pale wood.

“What is that?” Ben asks, unnerved.

“That is the mark of a shtriga,” Dean says baldly. “That’s the thing that landed your little brother in the hospital.” He glances around the room, avoiding Sam’s incredulous gaze. “You sleep in here too, don’t you? Did you see something that looked like a big black shadow over Asher’s bed last night?”

“No,” Ben lies, his heart sinking. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Dean,” Sam says, a little warningly. “He’s a kid.”

“So he shouldn’t know?” Dean says snappishly. He’s being disingenuous, and he knows it. But Dean can’t shake off the sight of Ben crying behind the desk, keeping the motel open while his mother sits at his little brother’s sickbed. Dean, you see, is endlessly grateful that his father taught him to hunt. There is nothing that scares him more than helplessness.

Ben swallows his fear. “No,” he says. “No, I can handle it. I want to help.”

The silence that these words leave is unpleasant and too long. “All right,” Dean says finally. “I need you to tell me everything that happened last night. Honestly.”

“I did see something,” Ben admits after a long moment. “But I- I didn’t know what it was. I thought I was dreaming. I’m sorry.”

Dean remembers what his father always said.  _ Sorry isn’t good enough.  _ Dean always thought that this is a very good lesson to learn, but he can’t bring himself to say it.

“It’s okay, kiddo,” Dean says, and it comes out softer than he wanted it to. “It’s okay.”

Ben Roberts is twelve years old when he learns about monsters for the first time, too young, as far as Sam is concerned, and too old, as far as Dean is. Ben listens carefully as they explain what a shtriga is, how it kills, how it can be repelled. 

“We can set up salt lines in your room tonight,” Sam says. “So don’t worry about it.”

Both Ben and Dean have already considered this, and both have already dismissed it. Ben would never forgive himself for a night of safety while Asher lies close to death. Dean knows this, because he has never forgiven himself for an hour at the arcade.

“It comes after families,” Dean says. “Works its way through siblings. This might be the only time that we know who it’s gunning for.”

“No,” Sam says flatly. “We can’t use him as bait, Dean, Jesus Christ-”

“He’ll be fine,” Dean insists. “We’ll be right outside, Sam, I wouldn’t let it kill him-”

“It’s not about you,” Sam says angrily. “Look, I get that you feel bad about what happened, all right? But that doesn’t mean we can risk his life.”

Dean opens his mouth, enraged, but he doesn’t get a chance to reply.

“Stop it!” Ben yells. Sam and Dean look at him, startled. Ben’s eyes are bright with new tears, and he rubs at them furiously. “Just stop it!”

“Hey, look, we’re sorry,” Dean starts, but he doesn’t get any further.

“Just get out, okay?” Ben says. He’s on the brink of tears, and not the stoic ones he’s been crying all morning. He doesn’t want to break down in front of them.

Sam wants to speak, but Dean silences him with a look. Slowly, they file out of the room, leaving Ben alone. They hear the boy begin to cry as the door clicks shut behind them.

“You can’t ask a little kid to do shit like that,” says Sam.

“I did shit like that,” Dean says. “Younger than him.” It’s true, but he regrets the honesty immediately, because Sam’s eyes go big and soft and sad.

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Sam says. “You were a kid, Dean. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Don’t fucking do that,” Dean says roughly. “Don’t make excuses. All right? I almost got you killed.”

“But you didn’t,” Sam says, stubborn. “And it shouldn’t have been your job to begin with.”

Dean turns away, not wanting Sam to see his wet eyes. “Come on,” he says. “We have to learn the incantations.”

There is an Arabic incantation and a Latin one. Neither are incantations, really, not in the conventional sense of the word; they’re prayers.

“Which one works better?” Sam asks. “Muslim or Christian?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says, a little dismissive. “I don’t think it matters.”

They end up choosing the Muslim exorcism. They listen to Ayat al-Kursi on YouTube, and Dean doesn’t tell Sam how the words are faintly familiar, doesn’t tell him that he listened to Faisal recite this as he fell asleep, doesn’t tell him how the verse sounds like a home that no longer exists. Sam would not understand. Sam listens to the words and is again struck with how strange his mother’s God is to him. He finds himself wishing they’d chosen the Christian prayer.

Dean goes out for food early in the afternoon, leaving Sam to memorize the verse. When he comes back, he finds Ben standing uncertainly outside the door.

“Hey, kid,” Dean says. “You hungry?” He sits down on the concrete and opens the bag of sandwiches. “Sit down.”

Ben sits slowly and takes the proffered half of the cheesesteak. “Did you get these from the sandwich shop on Biel Street?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“That place sucks,” Ben says. “Kenny’s is better.” 

“Eat your sandwich, shitface,” Dean says, and Ben smiles despite himself.

They eat in silence for a little while, and then Ben looks up at Dean. “That’s your brother, right?” Ben says. “Who you came with?”

“Sure is,” Dean says. “I’d do anything for him.”

Ben nods slowly. “Me too,” he says. “I’d do anything for my brother.”

Dean thinks about what Sam said. “Still,” he says. “It’s pretty scary. It’s okay if you don’t want to do this, you know? I won’t be mad.” It’s a choice he was never given, but Ben is already shaking his head.

“No,” he says. “It’s like you said. This might be your only chance, right?”

“Right,” Dean says after a moment. “Yeah.”

So the shtriga pulls itself through the window late that night, leaving two twin handprints on the outer sill of Ben and Asher’s room. Dean launches himself at the shtriga, and they grapple on the floor as Sam shouts the prayer. Dean lets out an awful cry as the demon’s claws scrape across his jaw down to his neck. For a single heartbeat, Sam falters. The shtriga raises its filthy head and seems to realize that Sam is the bigger threat. It leaves Dean bleeding on the floor and flies at Sam, knocking him back heavily against the wall. There’s a horrible crack as Sam’s arm breaks.

“Fuck!” Sam shouts. “Dean-!”

Dean staggers to his feet, feeling blood trickle hot and sticky down his neck and stain his shirt. Then he sees Sam, crumpled on the floor, with the shtriga settled over him.

There isn’t time for him to think. He throws himself at the demon and clings to its back. In its ear, he hisses the final words of the prayer.

And just like that, the shtriga vanishes without so much as a whimper. Dean collapses onto the floor and groans.

“Bismillah,” he breathes.

“What the fuck,” Ben says from his bed. “What the fuck?”

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” Dean says, staring up at the ceiling. “Not as bad as it looks.”

Sam groans. “Dude, this is the worst fucking break I’ve ever had,” he says. It’s true. The bone has torn the skin on his forearm, and he’s bleeding all over the jeans they bought only a couple days ago. “Not as bad as it looks. Low fucking bar, Dean, it looks like shit. What the hell happened to you?”

“I think I’m gonna need stitches,” Dean says. “Ow. God.”

“If you guys are going to the hospital,” Ben says, “can you give me a ride?”

Sam manages to laugh as Dean glowers from the floor. “All right, shitface,” he says. “Just get me my keys.”

At the hospital, Dean gets stitches and then sits by Sam as a doctor puts him in a cast. “Dude,” he says. “This is like, the dumbest way you’ve ever broken something.”

“How was this dumb?” Sam asks. He’s smiling. “If this was dumb, then what was that one time you broke your ankle falling out of that girl’s window so her dad wouldn’t see you walk through the front door?”

“Legendary,” Dean says patiently, like Sam’s forgotten something obvious. “That was legendary, Sam.”

Upstairs, in the children’s ward, five children are waking up from their comas. When Asher wakes up, Ben starts to cry in relief, loud and childlike, and he doesn’t care who hears.

Before the Roberts family returns to the motel, Ben insists on stopping in the ER, where Dean and Sam sit bickering good naturedly.

“He woke up,” Ben says, throwing his arms around Dean. “He woke up. We’re going home.”

It hurts to talk or turn his head because of the gash in his jaw, but Dean barely cares, laughing as he hugs Ben back. “Good job, kiddo,” he says.

“Did the rest of them wake up?” Sam asks.

Ben looks up, and his young face clouds. “No,” he says. “One of them hasn’t yet.” He looks unsurely between Sam and Dean. “You think he will?”

“He might,” Dean lies.

“Okay.” Ben nods once. “Okay, I gotta go. Bye. And thanks.”

Dean watches Ben run back to his family. His face is, for once, unreadable to Sam.

“This was a good job,” Sam says. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says tightly. 

Sam hesitates, balancing on the edge of honesty. Usually, he falls back, fearing the worst, but tonight he throws caution to the wind.

“I’m sorry for giving you so much shit about always listening to Dad,” Sam says finally. “But I’m not sorry for not listening to him. We deserved a better childhood, Dean.”

Sam wants so badly to understand his brother, wants so badly to be understood in return. But his carefully chosen words make Dean’s gut twist in shame, because here is the truth: when Sam expresses rightful anger with their father, it forces Dean to confront the possibility that maybe there is something from which he failed to protect his brother.

“Yeah,” Dean says quietly. “You did.”

Before Sam can say anything, Dean gets up, patting his pockets for a credit card. “Gonna go pay,” he says gruffly. “Get ready to get the hell out of here.”

The shtriga has rested heavy on Dean’s conscience for sixteen years. And Dean is not a vindictive man, but he is willing to hold forgiveness hostage as long as John will. He ducks into a supply closet to call John, to tell him that the shtriga is dead, but John doesn’t pick up the phone, so Dean leaves a voicemail.

John listens to it and deletes it directly after.

It doesn’t feel like forgiveness, Dean realizes with a sick, dawning horror. He stands in the doorway, watching Sam already start to scratch at his cast, and he thinks about it, about all of it, Sam’s broken bones and hunger and fear of being hunted in his own home. Dean opens his mouth, wants to ask forgiveness.

But it all stops up in his throat when he tries to muster the words to tell Sam any of this. And when he looks at Sam’s soft, expectant eyes, he knows that Sam will offer excuses.

Dean doesn’t want excuses. With an awful certainty, he knows that he doesn’t deserve them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> major tw for suicide and abuse

In the dark winters of New England, something is always stirring.

You might understand what I mean, if you’ve spent long hours on a highway, or staring out your window when you can’t sleep, tasting cold air and listening hard for the rustle of something beyond the crickets. But it’s hard to put words to it, so most of us shake our heads, feeling silly, and return to bed, ready to dismiss the strange feelings and the odd noises as products of too little sleep and an overactive imagination.

Sam and Dean have never had the luxury of an overactive imagination. Sometimes, as they drive, the smell of ozone fills the car. Sam will gaze out the window into the blur of the forests, knowing that they could dig all night and never find the poor lonely thing. Dean will keep driving. The smell will dissipate as quickly as it appeared.

Sometimes, as Sam sleeps in the passenger seat, Dean will pull over to take a piss. He’ll see a carving on a tree, deep enough to draw sap. Sometimes he recognizes them, remembers vaguely some old earthblood god far more powerful than a tamed, pruned apple orchard. Other times he doesn’t recognize the rune at all, only feels a deep dread in his gut. These times, he gets back in the car and stands on the gas until the hair on his neck settles again.

Always, something is moving just past the treeline, behind the cramped little East Coast towns that are all blue and cold this time of year. Sam and Dean live with their ears pricked, waiting for the mournful howl or the unearthly screech that will rouse them from their motel room with salt and silver knives. But not all monsters howl or screech. Sometimes they scratch or whimper. Sometimes, they will stay coiled and small for years, for decades, for centuries, even, feeling hail on their twisted backs, rendering the earth they touch unholy. These poor creatures will turn their faces to the frozen sky and wish desperately to be anything else, wish to be something knowable, something forgivable, something lovable.

Monster is such a cruel word. I hate to use it. But I do anyway.

Sam dreams of Meg. He doesn’t expect it. Crucially, she doesn’t either.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. They’re sitting together on the floor of a beautiful apartment in San Francisco. Its owner prowls the city with yellow eyes.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. Then he frowns. “How can you see me?”

Meg smiles at him, cold and sharp, the only way she knows. “I can’t tell you,” she says.

“Do you know what I am?” Sam asks.

Meg tilts her head, considering him. “You’re like me,” she says, and for a single heartbeat, they each feel the relief of being like another. Then Meg becomes afraid. Disobedience is a terrible crime for children like them, and she is straying terribly close to it. She pushes Sam away, and he wakes up.

Sam can’t get to sleep for the rest of the night, staring at the patterned wallpaper and scratching absently at his cast. He’s sure that the dream was just a strange dream, because never, in any of his visions, has the subject ever been able to see him.

He is wrong. But the thought is enough to keep him from mentioning the dream to Dean.

Some nights, they hunt. Others, they sleep fitfully, listening and watching their surroundings for all the inhuman things that still live.

They’re in a 7/11 when it happens. Dean is leaning against the counter, flirting with the cashier, Cathy, so she won’t notice Sam shoving candy bars, Advil, bottles of isopropyl alcohol, and 5-Hour Energy shots into his pockets and sleeves and pants. She’s sliding her number through the little window in the plastic divider in five minutes flat, which has to be some kind of record, Dean thinks. He wonders idly if it’s the gash that the shtriga tore in him, jaw to throat, that’s working for him, and hopes it will scar if that’s so. (The cut does create a dangerous, strange sort of air to him that many young women are enamored by, and it will scar. But he will tire of how strangers look at him like he’s a threat.)

Sam sidles up to the counter. “Big Gulp,” he says.

“Dr. Pepper,” Dean says, at the same time that Sam says, “Sprite.”

“Fuckface,” Dean says, at the same time that Sam says, “Dickhead.” Cathy is smiling as she rings them up, thinking fondly of the way that she carries on similarly half-telepathic arguments with her own brother.

The only warning is Sam’s face twitching in pain before he collapses to the floor. By the time Cathy realizes what’s happened, Dean is already crouched next to Sam, pulling him up by his shirt. “Sam,” he barks. “Sammy, hey. Open your eyes.”

“Should- should I call an ambulance?” Cathy stammers.

“No,” Dean says without thinking. Then he looks down at Sam, whose eyes are spinning rapidly under his eyelids, whose already pale face has gone pallid under the fluorescent lights, and he starts to reconsider.

Then Sam’s eyes fly open, and he jolts upright. Cathy winces as Dean and Sam’s skulls clack audibly together, and Dean swears.

“We have to go,” Sam says. “Right now.”

“Go where?” Dean says, rubbing at his forehead. “If you didn’t just fucking brain me with your bigass forehead-”

“Dean.” Sam grabs the front of Dean’s shirt, and for a moment, Cathy watches them, locked in a strange staring contest that she doesn’t understand. She takes in the collections of little white scars they each have on their hands (relics from the Bloody Mary case), the bruise-dark circles under their eyes (it’s been three days since they slept in real beds), the gun that’s peeking from Dean’s waistband as he crouches over his brother (can you blame him?).

“Okay,” Dean relents, and all they leave behind them is an empty Big Gulp and a lingering sense of dread in Cathy’s gut.

“Gonna tell me what the hell that was?” Dean asks.

“We have to go to Maine,” Sam says shortly. “Someone is going to die, and it’s gonna look like a suicide.”

Dean does not want to believe this, not in the least, but it’s true. “What? Come on. What?”

“I saw it,” Sam says stubbornly. He avoids Dean’s gaze. They still haven’t talked about this, and Dean is still half convinced it’s all a misunderstanding.

“You saw it,” Dean repeats. “All right, Miss Cleo, how do you know it’s Maine?”

“License plate,” Sam says. Then he smiles. “I knew you liked Miss Cleo.”

“Shut up, Sam, just because it came on TV sometimes-”

Sam laughs. “Protesting too much,” he says wisely, and Dean glares playfully and turns up the music. It starts to echo a little oddly as they leave the small New Hampshire town and the highway is swallowed by forest, but Dean ignores it in his way, shouting along to Bruce Springsteen and drumming against the steering wheel.

Once they cross into Maine, they pull over in a rest stop. The sun is setting now, and gray sunlight filters weakly inside. Dean leans against the wall, watchful eyes scanning the mostly empty rest stop. He’s thinking of buying a cinnamon roll. Sam cramps himself against the payphone, broad shoulders high to hide the stolen FBI badge he’s holding. It’s one of the last good IDs they have, but it will be unusable after this, and Dean makes a mental note that they need to visit Utah soon. Dean listens to Sam rattle off the badge number and then the license plate to the Maine state police, and soon enough they’re driving to Jim Miller’s residence in East Bridgewick.

They’re only about an hour too late. They stand among the crowd, watching the garage door being pried open and a wife and son standing frozen on the doorstep. Sam’s face looks open and empty, glowing red and blue under the flashing ambulance lights.

“What happened?” Dean asks an onlooker.

“Poor guy,” she says, shaking her head. “Locked the garage and left the car running. He’s got a family, you know.”

Without saying anything, Sam turns on his heel and storms back to the car. Dean offers the woman a quick smile and hurries after his brother.

“What are you thinking?” Dean asks. “Ghost?”

“No.” Sam presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to stave off the traces of a headache. “No smell.” He feels Dean’s hand grasp his shoulder. Dean is unsure right now, uncertain of what to say or think about what Sam is. But of one thing he has always been sure: he needs to reassure his brother.

“Hey, man,” Dean says softly. He rubs Sam’s shoulder not-quite-gently, a reminder that he’s still here. “We can just go, Sammy, it’s fine. Can you handle this?”

Sam feels the mean urge to shout. The sudden anger makes his skin prickle with unpleasant heat against the dry cold of the evening air, but he pushes it down. He knows he’s only upset with himself for reminding Dean of what he is, and angrier for not even having saved a life with it.

“Yeah,” Sam says finally. “Yeah, I can handle this fine. We need to figure out what killed him.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a suicide?” Dean asks, concern still so heavy in his voice that Sam wants to scream.

“Yes,” Sam says tightly. “Stop it, Dean. We’re on a job.” For a moment, his tone and temperament is distinctly John’s. Dean lets it go.

It’s too late to visit the library or the public records office, so they head to the lone bar in town instead. Dinner is burgers and onion rings, and Sam settles at the bar to people-watch as Dean hustles pool in the back. On the best of nights, Sam can keep up with Dean- Dean taught him how to play pool the moment he was tall enough to see over the table, and as children, often the only thing keeping them both fed was the money they would make hustling pool or playing poker. But tonight is not the best of nights. Sam is exhausted and hyperalert at the same time, nursing a cast on his right arm, and his thoughts are preoccupied with the vision.

But still, they’re good at this. The bar is buzzing with speculation over what drove poor Jim Miller to suicide, vaguely sad noises for his family, a few decidedly tasteless jokes about the widow, who is by all accounts one of the most beautiful women in town. Sam mines gossip from a few office drones who tell him that they’re planning to leave early, since they’ve got work tomorrow. (Sam tries his best to feel jealous of them, their beer guts and their two children apiece and their blonde wives, but can only find a hollow sort of grief.) Dean plies the bums at the pool table with cheap beer, and he wins from them information and more money than Dean has seen since he was working for wages in the orchard.

The respectable working men leave first, and then the drunks and the bums. Everyone goes stumbling home eventually, except for Dean and Sam, who walk with identically even strides back to the Impala.

They pool their information. Jim Miller lived with his wife and his adult son. By all accounts, he was a devout Christian, a good man, although he was never the same after the death of his first wife. 

“Sounds familiar,” Sam remarks. He has no idea how right he is.

They get a motel room. Dean takes the bed closest to the door, as he always does, and tosses the Bible onto Sam’s bed.

“I always wonder,” Dean says. “Who do these motel owners think they’re fooling, putting Bibles in here? Who the hell do they think is staying in their shithole twenty five dollar rooms?”

Sam turns the thin pages of the Bible, thinking that his hands look too big and scarred to hold something so delicate.

“They make good rolling papers, though,” Dean says, startling a laugh out of Sam.

“Very nineties punk of you,” Sam says. He stretches out on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. It’s a little water stained from a few too many years without maintenance. “Smoking the Bible.”

“Please,” Dean scoffs. “I’m resourceful. Got nothing to do with the smell of teen spirit.”

Sam can’t get to sleep that night. It’s true that he has trouble sleeping most nights, head spinning as it usually is with Jess and Dean and John and horror stories, but tonight is different. Tonight, sleep won’t come to him no matter how long he lies tracing the water stains in the ceiling with his eyes, listening to Dean breathe in the next bed, although these two routines have always helped him get to sleep before. This motel room will fade in his memory within the week as just one in an endless litany, but tonight, it feels strange and isolated, an owl crowing somewhere nearby, the smell of snow and soil in the air despite the fact that they’re not close to the forest.

He flips absently through the Bible for a couple of minutes. He’s actually read it in its entirety; Jess’s family is Methodist, devoutly so, and Sam used to love going to church with them. But God isn’t something he wants to think about tonight, given that he’s not really sure if he’s eligible for heaven. He tosses the Bible aside and starts pacing, going through the case again in his head.

Then it occurs to him, and Sam almost feels silly for not thinking of it earlier. He used this intuition to find Dean, weeks ago in Plainsoak, didn’t he? Certainly he can do it again.

So Sam sits on his bed. He closes his eyes and pictures the garage where Jim Miller died, pictures the man’s expression of panic as he wrestled with the stubbornly locked car door. He pictures the license plate, the scuff in the upholstery, the vomit streaking Jim Miller’s shirt and the floor of the car.

It took Jim Miller one hundred and eighteen minutes to die. Sam imagines that, to know helplessly you are dying for two long hours.

Then a blinding flash of pain splits his skull, and Sam crumples back onto his bed as the vision strikes him.

He sees a beautiful older woman in a bathtub with her eyes closed. Her name is Alice Miller, and she is feeling empty.

The medicine cabinet creaks open, but Alice does not hear it. A razor blade slides down the wall and across the floor, and then up to her exposed arm.

Alice screams, but cannot move. Something is holding her down. The bloody razor floats, calm as anything, to the other side of the tub and slits Alice’s other wrist. The bathwater turns red, sloshing over onto clean white tiles.

It isn’t very long before she stops screaming and just goes limp, pale and exhausted. And not long after that, her eyes go still. The razor drops with a clink to the floor.

Sam comes out of the vision cold and sweating. “Dean,” he pants. “Fuck. Dean!”

Dean sits up almost puppetlike at hearing Sam sound so panicked. Sam, still blinded by the pain, feels the bed dip as Dean kneels on the bed next to him. 

“Sam,” he says, his voice still thick with sleep. “What’s wrong? Can you hear me? Hey, Sammy, I’m here.”

Sam grasps blindly at Dean’s shirt. The pain from this vision is worse than the one the day before. “The wife is going to die. Something’s going to kill the wife.”

“Another vision?” Dean says, hauling Sam upright. The painful white flashes fade from Sam’s vision, leaving a dull ache behind his eyes. Dean’s face swims big and worried into view.

“Get the hell off me,” Sam says, shoving weakly at Dean. “Yeah, another vision. Something is killing these people. Making it look like suicides.”

Dean brings Sam a glass of water and turns on the light, but Sam shakes his head, and Dean frowns and turns the light back off. Sam downs the glass so quickly it makes his head throb, and he can’t speak for a moment.

Dean is already pulling out his notebook and their father’s journal, flipping through them for ideas under the moonlight from the window. “You’re sure it’s not a vengeful spirit?” he asks. “I could see it being the first wife, if she died violent or Miller killed her. Do we know how she died?”

Sam remembers how vividly the bathroom smelled of blood and lavender soap. “There was no ozone smell,” he insists. “It’s not something human. Or something that used to be human.”

“Could still be a witch,” Dean points out.

“I don’t think so,” Sam says after a moment. “Telekinesis isn’t usually how they kill people, is it?”

“No,” Dean concedes. “Mostly they use poison or disease. Or fucked up animals.”

“Familiars,” Sam mutters. “They’re called familiars, Dean.”

“Get familiar with some fucking lore, dude,” Dean says, throwing John’s journal at Sam. It falls with a soft thump against the bed. “I’m not going into that poor lady’s house with my gun in one hand and my dick in the other.”

Sam knocks back a 5-Hour Energy and opens his laptop. Until the sun rises, they sit researching family curses and fake suicides, but nothing quite fits. Even the history of the town doesn’t match. There’s been three suicides in the last thirty years, one veteran, one schizophrenic, and one old woman who walked into the woods during a snowstorm and never came out.

Sam insists on taking the car to get breakfast. The motel room seems to have become a little smaller in the last few hours.

He’s surprised to recognize Max Miller at the counter of the general store. He has a round face, pale and acne-scarred, and Sam’s first thought is of the mournful look of a full moon.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Max, right?”

Max doesn’t lift his face to look at Sam. “Yeah,” he says.

“Sorry to hear about your dad,” Sam says.

“Everyone is,” Max says, with a heavy irony.

Sam nods slowly. “I just moved here,” he says. “Saw him at church a couple times.”

“Can you save it for the wake, please?” Max says snappishly. He’s tired of all the well wishes, for more reasons than one.

“When’s that?” Sam asks, keeping his tone gentle and even. 

“Tomorrow,” Max says, deflating slightly. “If you really care about a guy you saw at church a couple times.”

Sam nods, and he places the food on the counter, waiting silently as Max rings him up. Max hands him the plastic bag, and Sam lingers for a moment. “I just want to say,” he says. “I get what it must feel like. To be an orphan. I’m sorry.” This is mostly untrue, although he’s not sure it would be less so if John were dead.

Max regards him for a moment. “Have a good day,” he says finally.

On the second of November, in 1983, Jim and Serena Miller’s home burned down. Serena was killed, leaving behind her husband and infant son Max. Jim never forgot the smell of burning sulfur or the flickering yellow eyes of a man he didn’t recognize in his son’s room. Jim stood on the lawn, still coughing, holding his wailing son. When he pressed a kiss to Max’s forehead, all he could smell was sulfur.

The obituary that Dean reads, of course, does not mention the Yellow Eyed Man or sulfur. But it unsettles him nonetheless, and he’s still staring at it when Sam returns.

“Got you a tofu scramble,” Sam says, tossing the plastic box at Dean. Dean catches it out of habit, but it takes him a moment to register what Sam’s said.

“You did what?”

“I’m joking, dude. It’s a bacon egg and cheese.”

“Not funny,” Dean says, even though it is. He tears into the sandwich, still staring contemplatively at the article.

“The wake for Miller is tomorrow,” Sam says. Although he hasn’t gotten more than five hours of sleep in the past two nights, he’s wired. “We should go before then, though. Make sure his wife is all right.”

“Right,” Dean says, still distracted. Sam frowns at him.

“What’s up?” Before Dean can close the laptop, Sam takes it, and Dean watches his forehead furrow as he starts to read.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Dean says, trying for a laugh.

It’s more than weird, and they both know it.

“What are these chances?” Sam says slowly. “That I just happened to see  _ his _ parents dying, of all people?”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Dean says, making a grab for the computer. Sam steps back.

“Yeah, right,” Sam says. “It probably means nothing that the same thing happened to both of our families on the same night. Means nothing that I’m psychically drawn to him twenty two years later. Come on, Dean.”

“You think it’s the demon?” Dean asks, excitement jumping into his throat. He imagines calling his father, telling him that they’ve cornered the demon. He thinks John would be proud. He wouldn’t, but it doesn’t matter, because they haven’t caught the demon.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I didn’t smell sulfur. And why would it be back here picking off some random housewife?”

“Why the fuck do demons do anything?” Dean says. He’s already patting his pockets for his cell phone. “I’m calling Dad, Sam, this is a lead.”

“No,” Sam says flatly. “We’re doing this right, Dean. We’re here to keep that woman safe. We’re going to check the house for demons, and if there’s none there, we’re going to keep fucking looking. All right?”

“Jesus, Sam. I know you have your problems with him, but this is bigger than that,” Dean says angrily. “We’ve devoted our entire lives to finding this demon. You think he’d be happy if we found a lead and didn’t tell him?”

“You think he’d be happy if we called him about a lead that turned out to be nothing?” Sam snaps. He regrets it immediately, precisely because it’s so effective in shutting Dean up. Sam hates using their father’s rules to win an argument.

But the argument is won, and they agree not to call John unless they know for certain that they’re dealing with a demon.

They visit the Miller house late that morning. Max is still working at the general store, but Alice seems perfectly willing to receive them. Sam and Dean each think privately that she seems oddly vacant, and they’re right. Alice hasn’t really been present in her home for the last ten years, although this is not for supernatural reasons.

“Nice of you boys to stop by,” she says distantly. “Stay for lunch. I always make too much.”

Sam opens his mouth to decline, but Dean elbows him. “We’d love to,” he says.

So the visit passes like this, strange and disjointed. Alice seems to blink out of the conversation whenever she pleases, and even Sam’s gentlest pushing or Dean’s most obnoxious charm can’t hold her attention.

Alice is not a strong woman. She spent ten awful years learning to close her eyes and ears, and hasn’t quite realized yet that it’s safe to open.

The only real emotion that she shows during the meal is when Dean starts prodding about possession.

“Sulfur?” she asks, blinking. Then she frowns, a real, deep expression, not like the cloudy smiles she’s offered all day. “Why do you ask? Did Jim talk to you about that?”

“Did he talk to you about that?” Sam asks. 

“All the time,” Alice says, and she suddenly looks to be on the brink of tears. “For as long as we were married. He had this fear, you see. He was terrified that-” 

She cuts herself off abruptly and shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says, becoming distant again.

“Terrified of what?” Dean asks.

“Did he scare you, too?” Sam says quietly. “When he was scared?”

Alice looks at Sam, and she nods, slowly. “Ever since Serena died,” she says. “He was terrified that demons were in his house. Said they lived in Max. He was convinced that… that beatings would drive the Devil from our bodies.”

You see, it’s true that extreme physical trauma will exorcise a demon. It’s an old Puritan ritual that few hunters abide by, because it often kills the host. But Jim Miller was not a hunter. He was only a superstitious man driven mad with fear of the Devil, and his wife and child suffered for it.

Sam and Dean don’t get the chance to react to what they’ve just been told. Max has come home for his lunch break just in time to hear his stepmother tell two strangers his most awful secret, and he’s flushed red and humiliated.

“Get the hell out of my house,” he spits. “I don’t want to see either of you here ever again.”

Sam gets slowly to his feet. “Max,” he says. “I need to talk to you.”

“No you don’t,” Max says angrily. “You need to get out of here.”

When Sam speaks again, it’s on a hunch. (But his hunches are usually correct.)

“I get it, all right?” Sam says. “I know what happened to your dad, and I’m not trying to hurt you. But what you can do, I know. I can do it too.”

The front door slams shut, and the lock is audible when it clicks. 

“What,” Max says. “Are you going to tell me that it doesn’t have to be like this? You’re about twenty years too late, man, okay?”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Sam insists. “Look, can we just sit and talk for a second? Without your mom here? Dean, take her-”

“I’m not fucking leaving you here with this-” Dean is wise enough to cut himself off before he finishes, but Max laughs.

“Were you going to say abomination?” Max says. “My dad liked that one. Devil, he used a lot, too. Monster when he was feeling lazy.”

“Max,” Sam says carefully. “You aren’t any of those things. Okay? Just let Dean and Alice go sit down in the other room, and we can talk properly. Okay?”

Max laughs again. He doesn’t feel like any of this is quite real, hasn’t since he locked his father in the garage the night before, and so he shrugs and acquiesces. None of it matters, he reasons, because he knows he’s the most powerful thing under this roof.

“So.” Max stares at an abandoned knife on the dining room table, the one Dean was using to cut his food. It stands on its point and begins to spin. “What do you wanna talk about?”

“I just.” Sam stops, takes a deep breath. “I want to hear your side of the story, that’s all.”

No one has ever said this to Max before. The knife falters as it spins, and then continues faster. He watches it go.

“I’ve always been able to do this,” Max says. “My dad used to tell me he caught me one time spinning my own mobile in my crib.”

“Before or after your mom died?” Sam asks.

Max looks at him sharply. The knife wears a groove into the table. “After,” Max says. “Always after. He was convinced a demon with yellow eyes burned down his house and killed his wife. He thought I made a deal with the Devil for ungodly powers.” He recites this easily, because he’s heard it many times.

“I tried not to be… this.” Max splays his arms, smiling. “But it didn’t matter how long I went without doing this.” The knife spins faster. “My dad would come home from church and beat me so bad I couldn’t walk. But who fucking cares, right?”

“Max,” Sam says quietly.

“She sure didn’t,” Max says. He still refuses to meet Sam’s eye. “Would just hide up in her room like she didn’t know.”

“He hurt her too, Max,” Sam says. “It wasn’t right, what she did, but she was just as scared as you.”

“I don’t care!” Max says. The knife clatters to the table, still, and Max is glaring at Sam now. “Do you fucking know what it’s like for your own father to hate you? Do you know what it’s like to spend your whole life knowing that you’re not- that you’re not-”

“Human?” Sam suggests, and some of the fire goes out of Max’s eyes.

“I’ve been headed for hell my whole life,” Max says dully. “My dad made sure of that.”

“Listen, Max.” Sam leans forward, intent on saying this the right way. (The truth is, there is no right way to say it, not anymore.) “The same thing happened to me when I was a kid. November second, 1983. My house burned down, my mom died, and I got these powers. And we’ve been looking for the thing that did it ever since.”

“The thing that did it,” Max repeats. “The man with yellow eyes.”

“Yes,” Sam says, relief flooding him. He thinks he’s getting through to Max. He is, in a way, but not the way he wants to.

“My dad was right, then,” Max says. The knife on the table springs to attention again as Max stands up.

“Wait, Max-” Sam starts getting to his feet, realizing his mistake, but with hardly a tilt of his head, Max throws him back. Sam’s head cracks against the wall, and he loses consciousness for a few crucial seconds. Max walks into the living room, where Dean and Alice are sitting together. Behind him, he closes and locks all the doors to the dining room.

Dean puts himself between Max and Alice, his hands up. “Listen, man, you don’t want to do this,” he warns. “She didn’t do anything, all right? She’s a scared old lady.”

“I was a scared little kid,” Max says. His voice is dead. He looks at Dean and muses on how easily Dean stands defending a woman he doesn’t know. Dean, tall and brave and strong and so present and so obviously human that Max feels real jealousy begin chewing at him. The knife floats up between them. “Get out of the way. This doesn’t have to be about you.”

“Dean!” Sam shouts from the dining room. He pounds on the door and grabs uselessly at the knob, but Max is holding it fast. Dean’s eyes flicker to the door.

“Calm down, Sam!” he calls. “It’s fine!”

“What, are you two brothers?” Max asks. He can feel tears starting to stream down his face now, and he grins hollowly. “That’s really fucking nice. That’s really nice. Get out of the way, man, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Dean spreads his arms, blocking Alice from view. “Gotta get through me first,” he says, his voice hard.

“Dean!” Everyone can hear the anguish in Sam’s voice, how much he loves his brother.

Part of the decision that Max makes now is his determination to get to Alice, but another part, a sadder, lonelier part, is bitter with envy. “All right,” Max says. “I’ll get through you first.”

“No!” Sam screams. He throws himself against the door one last time, and without realizing it, musters enough power to overcome Max’s. The dining room door bursts open, and there stands Sam, hands up and eyes wild. “Don’t! Max, don’t, please.”  _ He’s all I have, Max, please. _

Max hears it. He hears the choked off plea that Sam doesn’t manage to voice, and his eyes widen. He wonders, suddenly, how his life may have been different if he had ever loved a human being so much that it could be heard without words.

“Okay,” he says quietly, a first and final act of kindness. Then the knife soars across the room and slits his throat.

Alice screams. Sam drops to his knees, eyes wide and horrified, staining his clothes and his hands trying to staunch the flow. Dean fumbles with his phone to call 911. But it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because it takes only sixty seconds for a human being to bleed out from the neck.

Dean puts gentle hands on Alice’s shoulders and guides her into the dining room. He’s done this too often over the last sixteen years, soothed and comforted and hushed away tears of grief and shock, but he doesn’t do it well this time. He’s more concerned with Sam, still on his knees next to Max’s body.

“I tried,” Sam is mumbling. “I tried, Dean, I-”

“I know, Sammy,” Dean says. He pulls Sam up, and Sam seems to melt against him a little, just like when they were kids. Dean probes gentle fingers against the knot of blood on the back of Sam’s head. “We gotta get this looked at, Sammy, come on, we can’t be here when the cops get here. Okay? Come on.”

Sam stumbles a little. He has a concussion. But he manages to get out of the living room and past Alice, who lets out a breathy little sob when she sees him covered in her stepson’s blood.

“Alice,” Sam says, stopping. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t answer, just drops her face into her hands and cries. They leave her a cell number, murmuring that if she needs to talk to someone who understands, they’ll be there. She never calls.

They leave town too quickly. Dean empties half a bottle of bleach spraying down the bathroom, and in their hurry, they take everything they can’t be sure won’t give them away, the sheets and the pillows and the towels. There’s no one at the front desk, so Dean leaves the room key in a puddle of bleach on the counter. Sam tucks the Bible into his jacket pocket without knowing why.

Once they’re a few miles away from town, Dean pulls over on the shoulder of the road. Sam looks at him, confused, and Dean would laugh at how he looks, half buried in stolen motel bedding and covered in blood, if it hadn’t already been such an awful day.

“All right, Sammy,” he says. He pulls out the first aid kit. “Come here, kiddo, let me see that egg on your head.”

Sam obliges without saying anything, and Dean’s stomach drops. He’s really hurt, Dean realizes. Sam hasn’t let Dean call him kiddo since he was nine years old.

Dean feeds Sam water and Tylenol and the dried fruit Sam always insists on buying. He bitches and moans about it, which almost makes Dean cry with relief. “My fucking head hurts,” Sam says.

“I know, Sammy,” Dean says. “We’re gonna get you to a warm bed real soon, okay?”

They drive. Sam floats in and out of alertness.

“You ever read  _ Frankenstein?” _ Dean says suddenly.

“Yeah,” Sam mumbles. “Met Jess in Intro to Lit.” He looks up, confused. “Where are we going? Are we there yet?”

“Not yet,” Dean says quietly. “Don’t go to sleep yet, Sammy.”

Sam won’t remember, later, how they got from East Bridgewick to a little lodge far enough away that no one will recognize them. He won’t remember anything that Dean said to him in the car. He won’t remember falling asleep on a warm bed, and he won’t remember how worried Dean is, watching Sam sleep properly for the first time in days.

He will remember, though, the chicken soup that Dean heats for him the next day. He will remember that Dean plays cards with him so he won’t get a headache watching TV. He will remember laughing about the sheets and pillows that they hadn’t had time to wash DNA evidence out of.

“I don’t need a murder charge on my record, Sam,” Dean says without thinking, and the smile slides off of Sam’s face.

“You think they’ll think Max was us?” he asks.

Dean shrugs, wishing he could say something different. “I don’t know, man.” He pauses. “It wasn’t. If that’s what you’re thinking. Okay? It wasn’t your fault, what happened.”

“I know,” Sam says, poking at the noodles in his chicken soup. “I know it wasn’t our fault.” He’s being half truthful. “I’m just thinking, man. That could’ve been me. So easily.”

“ _ What?” _

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sam says defensively. “I’m not saying I want to kill Dad, or anything. But Dean, me and Max, the same thing happened to us. And whatever powers I have, they’re getting stronger. I was never able to move things like I opened that door.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re like Max,” Dean says. He shakes his head once, firm. “No, Sam. Stop it. You aren’t Max, and his dad isn’t ours.”

“You stop it,” Sam snaps. “The only fucking difference between us is that Max had Alice and I have you.”

This leaves a ringing silence. Dean softens, and he sits down on the bed next to Sam. Sam has his gaze fixed on his soup, trying hard to find the strength to say what he knows he has to.

“Me and Max both… we’re not like anybody else,” Sam says. “We’re not human. He knew that, and so did his dad, and if shit goes bad our dad will know too. But I never wanted you to know.”

“Sam.” It comes out rougher than he intends it to, and Dean clears his throat. “Look at me.” Sam does. “Listen. I don’t give a shit. All right?”

Sam blinks. 

“I don’t give a shit,” Dean says firmly. “I’m never not gonna have your back. It doesn’t matter to me what you are. You could be the worst thing in the whole world, and I’d still love you.”

Sam doesn’t realize what a massive weight it’s been on him, the possibility that Dean would eventually recoil in horror and disgust, not until it’s lifted with these words. He feels unimaginable relief spill through him, and he stares into his soup, not wanting to cry.

“Hey, Sam, come on.” Dean isn’t far from tears himself. Sam looks up and gives him a watery smile.

“No chick flick moments,” Sam says.

“Fuck you,” Dean says, laughing despite himself. He rubs quickly at his eyes, hoping that Sam doesn’t notice that they’re a little teary, but he does. He doesn’t say anything.

I need you to know that although Dean and Sam are closer than they’ve been in years, this is not a happy ending. Max is buried in a plot next to his father’s. Their funerals are on the same day. Their caskets are lowered, side by side, into the cold earth, a gray sky hanging over the small Presbyterian cemetery. Alice, the beautiful widow of East Bridgewick, floats alone in her empty house like a ghost.

Dean and Sam cross into New Hampshire not long after. A tall brown skinned man with a distinctive scar on his jaw has been identified as the prime suspect in Max Miller’s murder.

Sam still doesn’t sleep well, and still drinks too many 5-Hour Energies, and it takes two full weeks for his concussion to heal completely. Dean, finally forced to admit that there is something inherently inhuman about his little brother, convinces himself that surely their father would never have done real harm to Sam if he knew. Dean closes his eyes and his ears to the truth, more like poor Alice than he would ever admit.

Outside, in the black of the forests, in the white of the late winter mists, monsters still rustle, just out of sight. Sam listens to them, and quietly, inside, he rustles with them.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for animal death

Dean is dying.

I can tell you how it happened; it was a rogue lightning spirit, a miniature electrical storm, enough voltage to kill someone bigger and stronger than Dean. But really, it doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is that John won’t pick up the phone. Dean calls him twice on the first day, and then stops trying. Sam calls him every twelve or fourteen hours for the next three weeks. But he never picks up, and he isn’t listening to the voicemails Sam leaves him. Dean says John is probably chasing down a lead. He is, but he wouldn’t pick up the phone even if he wasn’t.

Dean is dying, and when he looks to his father for guidance, there’s no one there.

“There isn’t really anything we can do,” the doctor says. “Nothing short of a heart transplant. But it’s extremely unlikely that a heart will become available in the next couple of weeks.” A short pause. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Burkovitz.”

“Thanks, doc,” Dean says calmly, a placating hand on Sam’s arm. “We appreciate it, man, really.”

Dean is dying. Irreversible heart damage due to electrocution. It’s a less violent death than he’d anticipated- there’s a lot of painful wheezing and coughing up bloody mucus and pissing four times a night- but there’s a small, quiet part of him that’s relieved. Dean’s never loved life all that much, and he thinks it might be nice to finally go to sleep without fearing what the next day will bring.

He tries to tell Sam this, but Sam would fight to the death just for an inch of life, so Sam doesn’t understand. He just sits, bent over his computer so long his back starts aching, searching endlessly for something to save Dean.

“You’re not gonna let me die in peace, are you?” Dean asks.

“What the hell kind of little brother would I be if I did that?” Sam says.

Dean laughs, but it makes him wheeze painfully, so he stops.

He keeps trying to think of ways to say a proper goodbye to Sam, but Sam refuses to let him get three words out. So Dean calls Cassie instead.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s me. How you been?”

“All right. The tenants lost the lawsuit.” Her voice is cool. They haven’t spoken, really, since Dean was in Chicago. He’d left so abruptly, Dean realizes, that he never said goodbye.

“Sorry to hear it,” Dean says honestly. “Listen, Cassie, I gotta tell you something.”

Cassie lets out a sardonic breath of a laugh. “Yeah, I have to tell you something too.”

Dean pauses for just a moment. “I’m never gonna see you again,” he says finally. “Doctors are giving me about a month, if I take good care of myself. Which I don’t, really. So.”

“Dean.” The word leaves Cassie’s lips almost beyond her own control, horrified and quiet.

“Cassie,” Dean answers. He keeps his voice steady, and he doesn’t hang up, despite how his arrhythmia is banging uncomfortably in his chest. He’s trying to make this easy on her. Even in his time of dying, all he can think of is making it easy on the people he loves. “What’d you want to tell me?”

She won’t tell him. She can’t, not now. It would break his heart, and she still loves him enough not to do that.

“My mom,” Cassie lies. “She asked about you.”

Dean smiles. “Give her a kiss for me, yeah?” he says, playful, and Cassie feels herself start to cry.

After they hang up, Sam gets into bed next to Dean, close as though they were kids again, and they watch daytime TV that Dean has always pretended to hate but doesn’t really. Dean watches Oprah, and Sam watches Dean, and eventually Sam rests his temple on Dean’s shoulder, even though he’s too tall. Dean doesn’t cry, but he wants to, desperately.

Dean spends much of his time sleeping now. Sam brings him out for drives, trying to lift his spirits, and it works sometimes. He tries to say his goodbyes, curled in the passenger side of the Impala, but after Cassie, he can hardly bring himself to do it. He calls Jacob Bender once, sits next to Sam for an hour as they rumble aimlessly around the little Indiana town, laughing and cheerful and never once bringing up his illness. When he hangs up, he rolls down the window and throws the phone so hard it shatters on the blacktop. The action winds him.

“Hey, you all right?” Sam says, alarmed. He’s slept about six hours in the last three days, spending all his time researching or tending to Dean. He has to tend to Dean all the time now that they’ve left the hospital, although Dean hates the doting. But Dean refused to die in hospice.

“I’m fine,” Dean snaps.

“Yeah.” Sam glances at Dean. “Those were the people you stayed with during the New York job?” It’s a transparent attempt to calm Dean, and it shouldn’t work, the way Sam’s jittery and hollow-cheeked, but Dean feels himself relax anyway under Sam’s sweet, gentle gaze.

“Yeah.” Dean takes a deep breath, and it works, a little. “Missy… she’s a good kid. Smart. A lot like you were at that age. She’s way cooler than you, though,” he adds. “Used to skin a rabbit in five minutes flat.”

Sam snorts. “I’ll work on my rabbit-skinning,” he says.

“Jacob is a great guy, too,” Dean says, getting a secret little smile on his face. “Loves to read. He has this thing about the way his books are arranged. Alphabetical order of authors. Goddamn geek.” He doesn’t mention this part, but he’s thinking of how Jacob read those books aloud, his voice slow and rich, how the rhythm of it made Dean feel warm and soft, made him feel like he could’ve made a home there.

Sam listens to Dean tell aimless stories about his month in the Bender home. It’s a fundamental difference between Dean and Sam, you see, that Dean puts roots down as naturally as any other human being does. Sam has always wished he could do this, spent four years trying, and he feels a tiny, bitter lance of envy that Dean can. “Would you have stayed with them?” he asks. “Would you have wanted to stay with any of these people? Cassie? Jacob?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Dean asks, genuinely baffled. 

“Nothing,” Sam says. “Just curious.”

“No,” Dean says. “I was always gonna leave with you.” It’s true, no matter how much he loved Cassie or Jacob, no matter how he doted on Missy or Cassie’s mother. He was always going to leave with Sam.

The days wear on. Dean watches Oprah, watches Sam, watches the shadows grow around the edges. Sam has to stand outside of the bathroom when Dean pisses or showers or vomits to make sure he doesn’t fall and crack his head on the tiles. They’re both eating poorly, and often they only eat to convince the other to take a few bites. Dean sleeps fourteen hours a day, and Sam barely sleeps at all, clacking anxiously away at his laptop. But when Sam says, “Dean, I think I found something,” Dean decides that he’s still going to take care of his brother as best as he can.

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, man,” Dean says. He’s in the passenger seat as they drive north, and he keeps shifting uncomfortably. He wanted to insist on driving, but there’s numbness in his hands and feet, and he has the tendency to nod off at odd times, so it isn’t safe for him to drive. He doesn’t want to make Sam point that out, so he doesn’t insist on driving, just fidgets in the passenger seat. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. Longer than most people ever get the chance.”

“You’re twenty seven, Dean. You’re not old.” 

“I’ve been hunting for sixteen years. I kind of am.”

“Stop it, Dean,” Sam says, trying and failing not to sound angry. “You’re not old and you’re not dying. This church is the real deal.”

Dean snorts and sinks lower in his seat, tugging at the cords on his hoodie. It’s too big for him, which is because they bought it for Sam, but it’s softer and warmer than anything else they own. “I’ve seen a lot of full of shit faith healers and psychics, dude. Like, a lot. It’s all about stealing money or attention or life forces, or whatever. Every time.”

“Not this one,” Sam says stubbornly. “They don’t accept money, and they’re closed to outsiders. They turn away everybody who comes looking for healing. They don’t even talk to the news.”

“What?” Dean says skeptically. “How are we getting in, then, genius?”

“We’re going to lie, genius.”

Dean wants to retort, but it’s a pretty solid plan of action, all things considered. He slinks further down in his seat and closes his eyes.

When he wakes again, it’s dark out. They’re in New England now, and the forest that passes them by looks deep and endless. Sam, in the driver’s seat, is on the phone with someone, but Dean is too tired to follow the conversation. He feels almost like a child again, confused and dozing in the front seat, wrapped in clothes too big for him, listening to the driver murmur about plans he’s not privy to, being carried somewhere he doesn’t know so that he can go through pain he doesn’t understand.

He listens to the low noise of the radio until it blanks into static. When he reaches out to change the station, Sam startles.

“Thanks, Joe,” Sam says hurriedly into the phone. “I’ll let you know when we get there, all right? Thanks, man. Yeah. Bye.” He snaps the phone shut and looks over at Dean. “Didn’t know you were awake.”

“How long I been asleep?” Dean mumbles. He keeps turning the radio knob, but there’s only static. Occasionally, there’s the indistinct sound of people talking, but this unsettles Dean more than the static does, so he just turns it off.

“All day,” Sam replies. “We’re maybe two hours out. You feeling okay?”

“I could run a marathon, dude,” Dean says, grinning up at him. Just to emphasize his point, he puts his feet up on the dashboard, even though he’s too tall and he ends up cramped uncomfortably in his seat.

“Ew,” Sam says, laughing. “Your feet fucking stink, dude. And you have cankles.”

“Cankles?” Dean peers at his feet, and realizes with faint horror that they’re a little swollen. Then he reminds himself that Sam has been running purely on bullheadedness and energy drinks, and Dean having a belated crisis about cankles won’t help anything, so he forces a laugh. “I’m gonna look like shit in my prom dress.”

It isn’t that funny, but they both laugh anyway.

The road narrows. The moon rises higher. The radio is still static. Dean has been on a lot of back roads in his life, but this one seems to stretch forever. The road narrows further, until Dean could reach out the window and touch branches. It goes from pavement to dirt beneath the wheels.

“Where the hell are we going?” he asks. “I swear, if you’re taking me to Salem-”

“We’re not going to Salem,” Sam scoffs. “There’s a village up here called Carnforth. Established in the 1600s. Their priest is supposed to be able to heal the sick. They’re really guarded about it. They don’t even let converts in.”

“That’s so much worse,” Dean says, and if he wasn’t so exhausted he’d gesture, make exaggerated expressions, prod Sam until he laughed. “At least there’s nothing actually freaky in Salem besides frat boys on Halloween, dude, this place sounds fucking terrifying. How long has the priest been able to do this?”

Sam hesitates. He feels silly telling Dean, knowing how he’ll react, but answers in earnest anyway. “It’s not the priest,” he says. “It’s the church. The healing ability has been passed down among the clergy as long as the church has existed.”

“Witchcraft,” Dean says. “Gotta be.”

“It’s the real deal,” Sam insists. The trees thin around them, and far down the road, Dean can see a little cluster of buildings. A church stands at the very end of the road. It’s small, unimpressive by any other standards, but here, it’s the biggest man made thing within miles. The cross, perched at its apex, glows faintly in the moonlight.

“This is creepy as shit,” Dean mutters, but he’s too tired to argue. The car, too big and too loud for the small town, slows to a crawl as Sam squints at the directions on his phone.

“We’re staying in Joseph Sterry’s old house,” Sam says. They pass quietly through Main Street, and Dean watches the shape of the church as it’s swallowed in darkness behind them.

“Who the fuck’s Joseph Sterry?” Dean asks.

Joseph Sterry grew up in Carnforth, Massachusetts, as tightly buttoned and solemn and pious as any other villager. He prayed with them, worked with them, believed in a cold God. He left only once, and he never went back.

“I met him online,” Sam says. Dean snorts, but Sam presses on. “On a forum about cult survivors. The Sterry house is still there, and if we pretend to be his sons, they’ll let us in.”

“Oh, great,” Dean says. “Thank fucking Christ for your smarts, ‘cause how else would we figure out how to join a freaky-ass olden-days cult that doesn’t let in outsiders.”

Sam laughs. “Call it an educational field trip,” he says. “And I don’t have to forge Dad’s signature for this one.” It’s a testament to how hard he’s been working at keeping his temper that the mention of their father doesn’t cause tension.

“I still can’t believe how young you learned to do that,” Dean mutters. “I was still getting side-eyes into sixth grade.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you sucked at it.”

“I figured it out! I was helping Dad forge checks for a minute when you were in high school, remember that?”

The banter fades as they come up on the Sterry house. In the darkness, it’s almost skeletal, pale rotting wood stark, windows that look like open eyes with their shutters hanging in disrepair.

“Jesus fuck,” Dean says.

“We’ve stayed in worse places,” Sam says grimly. “And we’re not leaving.”

Dean knows nothing he says will dissuade Sam, but he still bitches Sam out, on the principle that they’re brothers and he has the right to bitch Sam out whenever he pleases.

They make themselves surprisingly comfortable in the neglected little Sterry house, but that’s frankly not saying much, considering their standard for comfort. They’re just a little too close to the woods and all its animal noises, and Sam, wired and sleepless, keeps startling. Dean is falling asleep before he really gets a chance to notice, though, and Sam spends half the night wandering around outside searching for a cell signal. But that’s how things are, lately. Dean sleeps like the dead, and Sam doesn’t sleep at all.

The next day, they introduce themselves as Sam and Dean Sterry to Father Thomas at the church in the center of town. Sam is expecting the priest to put up a fight, and Dean is kind of hoping he will, but Father Thomas hesitates for only a moment.

“You’re blood,” he says. “You should be allowed the same chance as anyone else.” His eyes are so pale blue they’re almost translucent, and he looks intently at Dean, takes in the shallow breathing, the deep circles under his eyes, the sallow brown of his skin.

“Your father,” Father Thomas says after entirely too long. “He sent you?”

“No,” Sam says. “He doesn’t believe anymore. But we do.”

Finally, Father Thomas smiles. “Brave boys,” he says. “You mustn’t follow your father’s orders when they break the word of God.” Almost on cue, a crow calls from somewhere nearby, and Sam starts. 

“Apologies,” Father Thomas says, glancing behind him. “It’s a pest. Pay it no mind, it loves attention.”

Dean wanders as Sam stays to talk to Father Thomas about their conversion. The church seems too small and too large all at once; smaller than any other house of worship he’s ever been to and far bigger than the other ramshackle buildings on the one small street in the town. He walks around the side of the church, reaching out to trail one hand along the walls. 

Behind the church is an old cemetery. It seems to take up more space than the entire main street, tombstones stretching too far back. Dean can hardly believe he missed it on the ride into town. He wants to think it’s his hunter instinct telling him there’s something wrong with this place, but what unsettles him about Carnforth is perfectly human. He’ll sag with relief when he finds out there is something unnatural happening here, privately thankful that his nervousness has been validated, but Dean has never been nervous about something he can kill.

He notices, suddenly, two women on the far edge of the cemetery. One, the younger, is in a wheelchair, and one, the older, is bent at eye level with her, hands on her shoulders.

Layla Rourke, the tragedy of Carnforth. She was never very pretty or agreeable, her wispy hair always wrapped to reveal a thin face, sharp eyes that were too close-set, gray freckles on pallid skin. But this, perhaps, is part of the tragedy. A plain, unmarriageable girl, ill but unworthy of the only mercy God has to offer. Three years she’s been sick. Three years she’s been coming to Bible study with Father Thomas. Three years she’s been waiting for divine healing that has saved six others in her lifetime.

Today, her mother hopes, it will work. It won’t, and it never will, and Layla knows this. But her mother hopes, and Layla lets her. 

“Hey,” Dean says, his usual charm tempered somewhat by the death rattle in his voice. “I’m the new kid.”

“New?” Layla’s mother asks sharply.

“Dean Sterry,” Dean says, giving her a brilliant smile. Layla’s mother looks distrustful. Joseph Sterry grew up alongside Patience Rourke, and the story of his flight has been a cautionary tale told to children for years. 

“Layla Rourke,” Layla says. She’s a slight woman, pale, and she once had work calluses on her hands. They’re faded now, bedridden as she is for most of the year. “Cancer.”

“Is that how we say hello here?” Dean asks. “Heart damage.”

“It most certainly is not,” Patience says, bristling. “Surely we haven’t stooped so low as to invite the likes of you into our parish. Where is Father Thomas?”

“Chatting up my brother,” Dean says idly, ignoring the insult. “Do we have to do homework? I’ve never been to Bible study. Will the miracle still work if we don’t do the homework?”

He’s mostly just trying to rile up Patience, and he’s pleasantly surprised at the growing smile on Layla’s face.

“I’m not sure,” Layla says, a slant of irony to her thin mouth. “Maybe we should try homework next.”

So, awkwardly, Sam and Dean try to fit themselves into the little parish of Carnforth. Town hall meetings on Fridays, market days on Saturdays, church services on Sundays. Sam, overeager and smiling, thrusts out his hand to shake, makes small talk, is almost palpably desperate for connections with the only people he’s ever met who are more afraid of God than he is.

But Sam is never greeted with warmth from the townspeople, wary as they are. Dean watches Sam’s expression become crestfallen, watches Sam realize all over again that he is an outsider everywhere.

Bible study, every day at four o’clock, is mostly just as awful as Dean always thought it would be. He strikes up an easy friendship with Layla, though. Father Thomas thinks to himself what a strange pair they make. Layla, who’s always seemed so demure, mumbling things under her breath that make Dean burst into raucous laughter. Dean, once a physically powerful man, walking slow and painful with Layla around the edges of the cemetery.

They stay in Carnforth for a long time. Dean attends Bible study every day with Layla to no avail. Father Thomas gives Sam a small cross necklace made of small polished wood, and sometimes Sam will rub it absently between his fingers as he reads from the Bible they’d stolen from the motel.

Dean knows he’s ailing. He says nothing and keeps going to Bible study. His fatigue is so bad that sometimes he’ll sleep all day, go to the church for an hour, and fall asleep on the ride back to the house.

It’s on the eighteenth day after the storm spirit, five days before Dean would have died, that it works.

It’s raining outside, not hard but terribly cold. For once, the crow on the roof is silent. Father Thomas is speaking. He’s said much of it before, but there’s something about it today that catches in Dean’s chest, right next to his failing heart.

“Salvation is unreachable if you do not already have it,” Father Thomas says. “And peace is unreachable if you spend your life straining for salvation.”

Dean is slumped back against the pew, only half listening. He has his finger pressed against his radial artery, counting the beats like his father taught him. His pulse is irregular and thready, but then, it always is now. Father Thomas clears his throat and goes on.

“Do good works happily, and do them with the knowledge that they will not earn you forgiveness.” A pause. “Dean,” Father Thomas says gently. “Are you listening?”

“Forgiveness,” Dean grunts. He thinks about his father. “Yeah.” 

Then he slides to the floor, unconscious. Layla watches him, and in the quiet, bitter privacy of her own mind, thinks,  _ seven. _

Sam is so overjoyed he almost bursts into tears right in front of the church. He’s clutching the little wooden cross in his pocket so hard that the T-shaped dents in his hand don’t fade for hours, but he doesn’t care. Dean insists on driving back to the Sterry house himself, and Sam is all too happy to be back in the passenger seat.

Sam spends most of the next day resting. He still can’t get much sleep at a time, but he’s resting more than he has in weeks, bustling around the little house to pack their things in between two or three hour snatches of sleep. 

Bible study ends at five o’clock. With Sam happily asleep on the couch, Dean gets in the car and drives to the church at five past.

Layla is outside, at the edge of the church cemetery, hands folded cleanly in her lap over her blanket. She’s looking at the space that her mother reserved for her after the second year without divine mercy. She sees Dean coming, but doesn’t look up until he’s right next to her.

“Some trick, huh?” Dean says. This is his way of apologizing.

“How did you do it?” Layla asks. She isn’t being accusatory. She actually sounds a little amused.

“I don’t know.” Dean looks around theatrically, playing it up for her benefit, and then he leans close and says, “I don’t even believe in God.”

Layla looks up, and for a moment he thinks he’s offended her. Then she laughs. It’s a loud, unpretty sound, incongruous in the chilly gray cemetery, but it brightens her colorless face and makes her almost beautiful. “Some trick,” she agrees. “I think that’s my mistake.”

“Believing in God?” Dean asks, taken aback.

“Yes,” Layla says. She looks up at the church, towards the crow’s nest. Every time Father Thomas sends people up to shoo it away, it returns to its perch on the left arm of the cross, screeching during sermons and surveying the town with its cold glare. Layla loves that crow. “If I didn’t, I might be able to ask for His mercy.”

“How’s that?” Dean asks.

“You tell me,” Layla says, shrugging. “You have no faith, and yet He took mercy on you. I believe in Him, and yet I’ve been dying for three years.” She’s never spoken so blasphemously before, and she doesn’t know why she does now. Maybe it’s just how strange Dean is, tall and scarred, earning miracles he doesn’t believe in. “I don’t want forgiveness. Sometimes I think the Lord should beg mine.”

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that, but she doesn’t expect him to say anything. Layla sits calmly in her wheelchair, feeling the cold of a grave she knows she isn’t far from. Dean stands at her shoulder, and for a moment, he wishes there was a God, just so Layla could spit in His face.

Then Patience comes and wheels Layla away, and Dean is standing alone in the cemetery.

“I don’t understand,” Sam says later. “You’re okay. You’re alive. Why question it, man?”

“There’s something not right here,” Dean says stubbornly. “We need to figure it out.”

“No,” Sam says flatly. “This is exactly what it seems like, Dean.”

“What, God saved me?” Dean scoffs. “God is real, and he only exists in some weird creepy Puritan village? You seriously believe that?”

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam says angrily. “Why is it so insane to think that God is real? We deal with crazy shit all the time! Why do you only want to believe the worst?”

“This place is batshit, Sam! If God was real, don’t you think he would’ve blessed someone actually-” Dean cuts himself off.

“What, you don’t think you’re worth saving?” Sam demands. “You are, Dean, but your stupid fucking martyr complex-”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Dean snaps, even though it absolutely is. “I was going to say someone who actually believes in God. Layla does. But she’s going to fucking die, man, for what? For me not to die the way I was always going to?”

“How can you just reject any kind of God at all?” Sam asks. “I mean, you say the name of God all the time.”

Dean shakes his head in frustration. “But that’s not- that’s Mom, Sam. Not God. I don’t believe in God. I believe in Mom, and I believe in Dad, and I believe in you. Can you please just trust me? All right? Look, look,” he says hurriedly. “Give me one day. Tomorrow, I’m going to go look around the church. You go in and say bye to the priest. If I don’t find anything, we’re gone. All right?”

It’s only because Sam truly believes that Dean won’t find anything that he agrees, and the next day, with the Impala fully packed, they go to the church. Dean gives Sam a meaningful look as he slips around the corner, and Sam sighs and goes inside.

He makes small talk with Father Thomas for a few minutes, but before he can amble his way to some semblance of a point, Father Thomas guides him to a seat. 

“There’s something on your mind,” Father Thomas says. “Speak.”

It’s all the permission Sam needs. “Will you tell me?” Sam asks, and Father Thomas’s head tilts in confusion. “How you do it?”

“Your father never told you,” Father Thomas says. He never knew Joseph Sterry. Still, it surprises him that Joseph wouldn’t have told his own children. Father Thomas can’t imagine not passing down this religion.

“We weren’t raised well,” Sam says, and it doesn’t even taste like a lie. 

“I know, child,” Father Thomas sighs. He isn’t old enough to speak like that, but it doesn’t feel strange. He has a quietude that seems to belong to a man much older, a stillness to him, no jittering or restlessness. Sam notices the heavy way Father Thomas sits, notices his hands motionless against the smooth black fabric of his pants. Sam can’t decide if such stillness comes from unshakeable faith or sad resignation. 

“It isn’t me,” Father Thomas says. “I cannot make miracles. I’m only a man.” He pauses. “Do you understand predestination, Sam?”

Something sours in Sam’s stomach. There’s the screech of the crow outside, muted, but Father Thomas’s pale eyes don’t waver from Sam’s face. “Yes,” Sam says. “Some of us have been chosen for heaven, and some of us haven’t. We can’t reach salvation through our actions on earth.”

“Very good.” Father Thomas gives him a small smile. “Does that make you unhappy?”

“Doesn’t it make you unhappy?” Sam says, his voice raising sharply. His words echo faintly in the small, plain church. Father Thomas regards him with a disappointed expression until Sam drops his head and mutters an apology.

“No,” Father Thomas says at last. “It doesn’t. It doesn’t make your brother unhappy, either.”

“What?” Sam is so honestly taken aback that he has to catch himself before he says  _ Dean doesn’t believe in any of this. _

“That’s how he was healed,” Father Thomas says gently. “All it takes is to sit here, in the house of the Lord, and understand that you are beyond forgiveness. There is no magic, no devilry, no witchcraft. It is only a deep and true understanding that you are and will always be a sinner, that no amount of virtuous acts will make you virtuous, and that salvation can come only from Our Father’s divine mercy.”

Dean, of course, has been raised believing this in his blood, but the mercy he counts on isn’t divine. It’s a smaller mercy, a more human one, found at the end of a belt or between a few gruff words, but to Dean, no mercy could ever matter more.

“And Dean did that?” Sam manages. He feels that his stomach has just dropped out of his body, leaving an absence gaping and terrible and envious.

“Dean did that,” Father Thomas affirms. “When one reaches that realization, and reaches it without any pride or anger or self-pity, the Lord grants us a small mercy on earth.” Finally, those pale eyes turn away from Sam, and Father Thomas looks up at the plain glass window, where the gray sky is visible outside. “Layla’s never been able to accept this.” His voice is genuinely sad.

“How do I accept it?” Sam asks, and he knows his voice has become whiny-little-brother, sticking against oncoming tears in his throat, but he can’t help it. “I’m so angry all the time, Father, I drive myself in circles feeling sorry for myself and wishing to be good, I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Sam,” Father Thomas says. His heart twists in genuine sympathy, and when he speaks, he’s trying his true and honest best to help Sam. “Be patient with yourself. I’ve never seen it work so quickly as it did with Dean. Take comfort, child, because I do think you’re further along than you think. You know that you will never be free from sin, yes? You know that you can never earn forgiveness for what you are?”

Sam feels his eyes wet with tears, but he refuses to cry. “Yes,” he says honestly. “Yes.”

“Then you are almost there,” Father Thomas says, smiling. “All you need to do is stop fighting it.”

Then Dean bursts inside the church. He’s found proof that the so-called miracles are nothing but run-of-the-mill witchcraft, albeit stronger than they usually see. Carnforth is, after all, not a house of God, only a pale, silent village in a thick forest in Massachusetts.

“Hey, Sam,” he says, faux-jovial. “Ready to go? Think I’ll make chicken for dinner tonight, what do you think?”

“Dean,” Father Thomas says. “I don’t think Sam is ready-”

“Sam,” Dean says, a hard edge to his voice, and Father Thomas falls quiet. He realizes, suddenly, how intimidating Dean is when he’s not sick or smiling.

“Thank you, Father,” Sam says quietly. In his pocket, he thumbs at the cross. “I appreciate it.”

“Come back soon,” Father Thomas says, but the echo of the door slamming behind Sam drowns him out.

At each of the four corners of the church, so low to the cold ground it’s mostly out of sight, there is an inscription. When Dean crouches and uses his bowie knife to carve a sliver of wood from the wall, creating a gap in the words, the hole heals itself, and the words reappear.

“That’s Old English,” Sam says, his heart sinking. “Nobody who established this place four hundred years ago should’ve known that.”

“Witchcraft,” Dean agrees. “Powerful, to last all this time. And this building is not four hundred years old, which means that it’s renewing itself. We’re going to need a serious fucking spellbreaker.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He’s still holding onto the cross in his pocket.

The library is the only place in town that has Internet access. The books are useless, all full of Christian stories and writings, not that they bother to check them. Dean heads towards the computer desk without a second look at the shelves. Sam wants to say something, but he knows Dean’s right to ignore the books, so he follows quietly.

It takes weeks for them to parse out the spell. They spend sleepless nights pacing the broken down old Sterry house, reciting old magic principles at one another, translations and research and seven death reports over the last twenty five years printed out and taped to the walls. One belongs to Desmond Byrne, a healthy man born January 24th, 1979, in Seattle, Washington. Desmond Byrne dropped dead of a heart attack in the same moment that Dean’s heart began to beat strongly again.

“A reaper,” Sam says. “Angel of death.”

“Bent to human will,” Dean says. “Hell of a spell.”

As they work, Sam thinks about the witch that casted this spell. Who was she? he wonders. What human being could build a miracle in the shape of God? What human being with such power would use it to bless a community that would burn her if they knew?

(The answer is not about God at all. A four hundred year long spell, an imprisoned reaper, dozens of innocents dead, dozens of innocents saved, a small funereal community frozen in the past, it was all for the beloved of a single witch-woman. No person alive knows this or will ever know it again. Really, it doesn’t matter to the story. But I thought you should know.)

On the next full moon, Sam and Dean steal a goat from the farm of Gabriel Ashe. They hold it by the horns as they lead it, but really they needn’t worry. It’s a gentle thing, a sweet young female named Lively.

“This feels weird, man,” Dean mutters. “This is witchcraft.”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam says tiredly. “How else are we going to break the spell? Burning the bones wouldn’t work, even if we knew who cast it.”

“I know,” Dean says. “I know. It just feels weird.”

They don’t speak again until they’re in front of the church. The sky is clear, for once, the heavy moon too-bright.

“Got the spellbreaker?” Dean asks. He’s pulling a bucket from the trunk, and his hand keeps flexing on his knife.

“Yeah,” Sam says quietly. “Ready?”

Dean puts a hand on Lively’s back and pushes her down gently. She goes willingly. He places his knife under Lively’s chin. She starts to get nervous, but she doesn’t have a chance to be afraid. In one quick motion, Dean opens her throat, and blood starts spilling, looking black with moonlight.

They wait for a few agonizing minutes as Lively dies. More of it is spattering onto the dirt and onto Dean than is going in the bucket, but Dean holds fast, keeping her head up to bleed her into the bucket. When it’s finally full, Dean nods once at Sam. Sam raises the paper, creased and worn thin with how many times they’ve erased and rewritten the incantation for the spellbreaker, and begins to read.

Dean pours the blood at each of the four corners of the church, watching the blood run into the grooves of the inscription and soak black into the earth. When he’s done, he drops the bucket. Blood is soaked into the front of his shirt and up his forearms. Sam, without faltering, pulls the can of gasoline from the trunk and hands it to Dean. They look dangerous like this, covered in blood, grim and silent, brown eyes seeming liquid black.

The pews, the altar, the plain wooden floors, Dean douses it all. Dean drags Lively’s body inside, leaving a dark trail of still-leaking blood. He picks up a Bible. Smiling to himself, he lights the book on fire and lays it on the pew that he’d always sat in for Bible study.

“Bismillah,” he says aloud, and then he turns and walks out.

Sam has finished the incantation. They leave everything behind, the can and the bucket and the worn piece of paper on which the spellbreaker is written. Dean shrugs off his blood soaked hoodie and shirt, despite the cold, and throws them into the blaze. With no shirt on, the burn from the storm spirit is visible, his necklace lying in the center of the starburst scar over his heart. He retreats to the car, but Sam stands there for another moment. He pulls the cross from his pocket and ties it delicately around his neck. He watches the church burn for another few seconds, and then he follows Dean into the car.

From its nest on the roof, the crow screams. 

They’re gone by the time the town rises to find its church a pile of smoking rubble and its priest dead of a stroke in his bed. Father Thomas knew nothing about the spell, about the reaper it imprisoned, about the trading of innocent human life. He believed wholeheartedly that Carnforth was the last stronghold of God’s mercy on earth. But the reaper is an ancient creature and cares nothing for what Father Thomas believes, and so Father Thomas dies at twenty three. He was only months older than Sam.

Layla dies four months later. Dean won’t know, but he will think of her sometimes. He will press a finger to his radial artery, feels his heart beat sure and strong and even, and he will wonder if she ever forgave God.

(She didn’t.)

Two nights after Dean and Sam leave the church burning, John listens to his voicemails for the first time in a long while. He has been hunting a new quarry: a woman named Meghna Ahamad, and creatures like her. He has just killed a man named Ansem Weems. 

Now, though, he takes off his boots, his jacket, stretches out on a rented bed for some much needed rest. His voicemail box is full, and he clicks idly through them until he hears Sam’s voice, tight and miserable.

“Dad, it’s, uh, it’s Sam. I know we don’t, uh, talk, really, but Dean’s in real trouble. I need you to come to the Saint John’s Hospital in Indiana. Now. The doctors say he doesn’t have that long. I’ll see you, I guess. I hope.”

“Dad, come on. I’m trying to find something to save him, but, Christ, he thinks you’re not coming. He thinks he’s going to die. I’m trying to save him, but he needs you here.”

“His entire goddamn life. His entire life he spent doing every fucking thing you told him, and now you can’t even give him a sign. God. Fuck you.”

“Are you even there?”

“He’s going to live, because I fucking saved him. He’s going to forgive you for this, but I want you to know I won’t. You hear me? I’m not forgiving you for this.”

The last message is dated weeks prior. John sits frozen for a moment. Then, one by one, he deletes the voicemails.

He will call his sons. It won’t be tonight, or tomorrow, but it will be soon. He will not ask after Dean’s illness or even mention it. The mercy of John Winchester is not so easily won.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a little bit of gore

There’s a strange kinship between hunters and cops.

If pressed, neither would admit it. Hunters wield unregistered weapons, and they find under-the-table ways to stay fed, and they print themselves fake badges, and they break into morgues and mausoleums. They set fires, they drink too much, they dig up graves and kill things without a twinge of remorse. They linger on the ragged border of civilization and monstrosity, violent and hungry, always one wrong step from death or prison.

Still, you would be surprised how many cops have some odd knowledge of monsters, and the men that kill them. You would be surprised to know how many hunters left law enforcement because it wasn’t enough for them. There’s an implicit understanding between them, a knowledge that the only reason hunters aren’t out of a job is because there’s no cells made for werewolves or shapeshifters in federal correctional facilities.

As it happens, Dean Winchester’s first time being arrested wasn’t for a gun with the serial number filed off. It wasn’t for writing a bad check, impersonating an officer, or grave desecration. It was for shoplifting. Two packets of ramen and two juice boxes. He was ten years old.

It wasn’t that John Winchester intended to starve his children. He loved them. But in those days, after the money from selling the house ran out and before he started the fraud, they were all hungry. There was sometimes only enough food for them to eat once in a day, and if there wasn’t enough John would skip a meal, and if there still wasn’t enough Dean would let Sam eat. Dean and Sam learned not to complain, learned how to read anger and despair in the broad lines of John’s back, and they would sneak into grocery stores and school cafeterias trying to take some of the burden of their hunger away from John. But it was a Saturday, below freezing, and John had been gone two days now working a case. Sam sat listless as he watched cartoons on the black and white TV, unable to muster the energy even to complain about it. He was getting sick, pallid and rail-thin and hands freezing cold, and Dean knew it. Dean could always tell when something was wrong with Sam.

So he stole a bit of food from the convenience store down the street, and was caught promptly. Dean, brown-skinned and tall for his age, throwing out his little fists and trying to run away, did not strike the police officer as worthy of much sympathy. Dean spent several hours in a holding cell.

Dean called John. It went to voicemail. He sat shivering in the holding cell for the endless afternoon it took John to listen to the voicemail and speed across the city to the precinct.

John gathered Dean into his arms, gentle for once, and shouted at the entire station for locking up a child. Dean pressed his face against the warm brown leather at John’s shoulder and breathed in the smell. It was the last time he ever felt protected in his father’s arms. 

When Dean started hunting a year later, John didn’t call him a child anymore. It made both of them feel a little better about the way Dean played bait for cops and monsters alike if John laughed and clapped him on the back and said  _ good man  _ instead.

They’re hunting a shapeshifter in Detroit. After Carnforth, Dean insisted on getting right back to the hunt.

“You almost died, Dean,” Sam said. It was a plea. Dean refused to hear it. It makes him feel guilty, thinking of how he’d accepted death so easily. He wonders what his father would’ve said. (Something like this:  _ You’re not done, Dean. You don’t get to check out. _ His voice would soften.  _ Come on, son. Almost there. _ )

So they didn’t check out. They didn’t rest. They found a case in Michigan and went, the smell of goat blood and woodsmoke still heavy in the stale air of the car.

It should be a routine hunt. They’ve dealt with monsters like this before. Shapeshifters are no stronger than the bodies they take on, and this one is wearing the soft skin of a middle class divorce lawyer. But these things only take one mistake before spiraling out of control. 

It’s an offensively sunny day when they close in on the shapeshifter, the almost-spring afternoon bright but still freezing cold. There’s a stink blowing in from the Detroit River, settled and gray over the city. They’re too late, about an hour too late, but they don’t know this yet. Sam, standing sentry as always, glances up and down the empty street as Dean picks the lock of the Rivers two-story house.

Paul Rivers is tied up in an oak chair in the center of the painstakingly decorated living room, blood soaking the expensive carpet. His belly is slit open to let intestines ooze over his thighs, and his young face has been ruined, eyes gouged out and cheeks tattered. Before him stands a monster with the face of a loved one, a man that is not a man, human fingers curled around a plain kitchen knife.

Bartholomew Rivers is at his office downtown. He’s thinking that he’s glad he canceled his afternoon appointments, because he has work to catch up on. He will be arrested tonight for gutting his son, and he is going to rot in prison for a very, very long time.

The horror in the living room slows Dean and Sam for one critical half-second. Shapeshifters have excellent reflexes, though, far better than human ones, and it’s on them before they can move. They grapple with the thing. They can kill it, and they would have had it dead if it weren’t for poor Paul, with just enough life left in him to let out a tiny groan. The realization that he’s still alive distracts them, and Sam, without a second thought, scrambles back to Paul. Dean, unbalanced, unnerved, half an eye on Sam, a human face snarling at him, can’t quite pull off the easy kill. The shapeshifter manages to bite him, hard enough to break the skin. Dean thrusts out with the silver knife and catches the thing in the shoulder. It screams and tears away, and Dean’s first instinct is to chase it. Then Sam, trying desperately to staunch the flow of blood from Paul’s stomach, yells, “Help me!”

John wouldn’t think twice. Killing monsters and saving humans, in that order, that is the family business.

Dean calls an ambulance from the Rivers’ landline. He and Sam pull out every bit of the considerable battlefield first aid knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years. It will be for nothing. Dean knows this, and somewhere Sam knows this too, but they stay with him anyway until the ambulances are wailing outside. His heart is still beating when they slip out the back door.

“We’re fucked,” Dean mutters. The shapeshifter is long gone, and the bite on his hand is hurting more than it should. “We’re fucked.”

Sam doesn’t answer because he knows Dean is right. Cops are starting to swarm up the street, and Dean and Sam have to back out of sight into an alley. It is, paradoxically, still a shining day out. The cold breeze pushes around the stink of the city like a tired old janitor pushing dust around.

“They’re going to be arresting the father soon,” Sam says. “The real one who’s at work right now. Unless-”

“Unless they find any of our DNA,” Dean agrees, his voice tight. “Or prints. We need to burn these clothes.”

“We will,” Sam reassures him. “We’re going to be fine.” He glances down at the bite on Dean’s hand, still visible past Paul’s blood. “We don’t even know for sure it’s going to shift to look like you.”

“Why else would it have bit me?” Dean says, flexing his bitten hand. “That thing’s going to be walking around with my face in a city crawling with cops.” Sam catches Dean’s hand and examines the bite mark. 

“It definitely drew blood,” Sam says, his heart sinking.

“I know it drew blood,” Dean says furiously, snatching his hand back. “It has what it needs to turn into me. We have to kill it before it uses my fucking body to-”

“Keep your voice down,” Sam says, glancing at the street, where police cars are still wailing past. “Look, we just have to get back to the car, all right? We’ll figure it out from there.”

They duck into the car and drive back to the motel. Dean stays a careful few miles below the speed limit, because he knows they’ll be stopped if he speeds. They burn their clothes, soaked as they are in Paul’s blood, and prepare their weapons.

And so the chase starts. Sam and Dean stalk the city as the shadows grow longer. Shapeshifters, they know, live on the edges, alleys and sewers and condemned buildings, so they search these ragged distant places first.

The shapeshifter can still taste Dean’s blood on its borrowed tongue. The sewer-stink flows around it steadily as it crouches, stiff so as not to disturb the knife in its shoulder. The sharp metal taste of blood expands and contracts like Dean’s heartbeat in its mouth, Dean’s pulse under its shifting skin, Dean’s breath in its not-lungs.

The shift takes longer because of the wound. But eventually, the shapeshifter straightens up from the mass of blood and gristle on the slimy floor. The shift has forced the knife from its body, and it kicks it aside into the flowing sewer water.

Then the shapeshifter strides into the night, armed with Dean’s body. It feels a strange kinship with Dean, deeper even than the bond forged by the blood transfer. How often, after all, does it blood bond with a human being almost as outcasted as itself?

Dean and Sam do not find the shapeshifter tonight, because the shapeshifter does not stay in the sewers. It wanders the heart of the city, unforgiving and cold and bright as it is when the sun goes down. It visits bars and clubs, it flirts with strangers and fights with bouncers and marvels at all the use it can get out of this tall handsome body.

Just before dawn, Paul Rivers finally dies. Bartholomew’s charges expand to include murder in the first degree. Dean and Sam listen to the local news channel on the car radio as they sit, trying to get a few minutes’ rest so they can begin the chase anew.

“I didn’t think he’d live so long,” Dean says quietly. The sun has risen, dawn light illuminating the city as if it’s searching for something. But all the slick sharpness of the night has vanished, the cockroaches skittered back through cracks in the concrete, and now there is only the empty gray stink of the river.

The shapeshifter is in Emily Stine’s bed. Emily Stine is a married woman, loved halfheartedly by her husband, charmed by the exotic twinkle in Dean’s eye. She and the shapeshifter have been talking half the night, naked bodies covered haphazardly in her scratchy sheets and passing cigarettes back and forth. It tells her that it’s hard to be different. It tells her that it has been changing its shape all its life. It tells her that it has been so many things, soldier and parent and prisoner. It tells her that its body is its greatest weapon and its only pleasure. 

Then it kills poor Emily Stine. It walks out of her apartment freshly showered. It thinks of Dean, and is desperately lonely.

Dean and Sam listen to the radio in the car. They drink from an old bottle of water. Dean lets himself close his eyes. The city is brightening around them, slow and hesitant, a little clouded. The rest ends when a police officer knocks on the window.

“Can’t stay here,” the cop says. “Sun’s up, fellas. Keep it moving.”

The borderlands between civilization and monstrosity stretch further than you realize.

Dean and Sam begin their search anew. Sam is better at going without sleep than Dean is. For Sam, the entire world goes into too-bright focus when he hasn’t slept, wired on energy drinks. For Dean, things begin to slow, to blur. Every face passing him on the street could be his own. 

They move too lightly, too quietly as they hunt through the city. Dean’s body is wound tight. Sam is like his shadow, the whites of his eyes glinting like something inhuman. This doesn’t happen often, a high-alert hunt through a crowded city, and the people they pass can’t quite pinpoint what it is that seems so strange and horrible about them. They just pull their jackets a little tighter, avoid Sam’s glinting gaze, veer from the straight path of violence that Dean’s body seems to burn into the pavement.

The sun sets again, and still the shapeshifter wanders the city. Dean and Sam discover the hole it lives in underground, spotted with puddles of skin and blood and hair in varying stages of decay, a few rotting blankets, but it’s empty. The shapeshifter loves its new body too much to do anything but ride the city, drinking and fucking and crowing with glee.

So eventually, Dean drives them back to the motel to sleep. He moves almost mechanically. He’s been through this before, knows how far he can push his body before it will kill him to push further. Thirty six hours awake, six hours asleep, wake again and keep going. Methodical as the cleaning and loading of a gun.

Sam is not so systematic. Dean folds onto the bed, asleep before his head hits the pillow, and when the clock goes off in exactly six hours, he’ll be alert before the first piercing wail of the alarm ends. Sam isn’t like this. He jostles, he tosses in his bed, he can’t get to sleep despite the sleep-deprivation headache starting to build at the base of his skull. He goes to the window and listens to the sparking underbelly of the city.

The shapeshifter kills loved ones. Sifting through Dean’s memories, it feels an awful thrill at the idea of killing something so loved as Sam.

Sam leaves the room. He passes the front desk. The man there, Jason, is snoring, feet propped up while the little black and white TV plays a news report about Emily Stine’s death. Sam pauses, taking in the details of the murder- she was gutted, the news anchor says, eyes gouged out and cheeks tattered and intestines splaying across her like so many ribbons. Dean’s body is a thing capable of incredible violence.

Sam keeps walking until he reaches the vending machines outside, under the overhang of the motel walkway. He’s holding the same five they always use, the one with the little tab of tape hanging off of it, but the bill is so worn and creased that Sam thinks distractedly that they’ll have to start using a new one soon.

“Sammy.”

Sam knows from the first utterance that it isn’t Dean. He turns slowly to face the shifter.

“Dean,” he says. “Want anything?”

“Yeah,” the shifter says. It comes closer, into the light that pools on the concrete from the lone bulb over the vending machine. Sam scrutinizes it. He couldn’t tell you exactly what tipped him off, why he’s so certain that it isn’t Dean. He guesses that it might be psychic intuition, but strangely enough, he’s wrong. He just knows his brother.

The tussle is short. The shapeshifter, with Dean’s hands, with Dean’s full strength, slams Sam’s head against the pavement. In the hazy, skull-stunned confusion, Sam is almost relieved to see Dean’s face above him.

The shapeshifter steals a car, one of many crimes that Dean Winchester will be charged with in the days to come. Sam is in the backseat, tied with jumper cables, kicking against the door and shattering the window glass all over the asphalt. If he wasn’t so big, he could squirm through the window. 

In the motel room, the alarm screeches. Dean sits up, heart hammering. He takes one, two settling breaths. Then he realizes that Sam isn’t in the room.

He doesn’t panic for another sixty seconds, not until he’s checked the bathroom, not until he’s reached the parking lot and broken glass crunches under his boots. But the panic comes, and it hits him heavily.

Jason, at the front desk, peers out into the night, watching the broad shoulders under the leather jacket. He glances at the news, which has been running the same college-age picture of Emily Stine for six hours, and leans back in his old office chair.

Sam’s head is aching. A dozen old concussions and a day and a half without sleep are getting to him. He rolls his neck, watches the shapeshifter pace in the small space. It’s holding a kitchen knife, nondescript, a little loose in its plastic handle.

“What are you waiting for?” Sam asks, less cautiously than he should. He scans his surroundings. It’s the hole where the shifter lives, scummy and plastered with old stolen skins.

“Do you know,” the shapeshifter says. “I can see all your brother’s memories? Right up until the second I tackled the motherfucker.” It’s getting better at imitating the cadence of Dean’s voice.  _ Motherfucker-  _ it rolls rough and low from Dean’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Sam says, ever obstinate. “I know how shapeshifters work.”

The shapeshifter crouches. Sam’s fingers freeze where they’re trying to work out the knots (John taught them how to get out of ropes, but never cables, and for the first and only time Sam is cursing John for being too lax).

“Just trying to see what it is he’s so damn loyal to,” the shifter says. “This thing is blunt as a fuckin’ club.” It takes Sam a moment to realize that the  _ thing  _ the shifter is talking about is Dean’s body. Dean’s eyes bore into Sam’s, the whites glinting too bright.

“You’re nothing like him,” Sam says quietly. “You know that, right?”

It’s a sore spot. The shapeshifter stands, glaring down at Sam. “Fuck you,” it says. “What, I’m less worthy of him than you are?”

Somewhere in the network of sewer tunnels, Dean is walking, a silver knife held tight in his hand.

“You don’t understand,” the shifter says, quieter now. “You don’t understand.”

Despite himself, Sam softens. He hauls himself up to a sitting position. “I do,” he says. “You think I don’t know what it’s like?”

“You’ve only ever been yourself,” the shifter says, shaking Dean’s head. “I’ve been a hundred different things.” It flexes Dean’s hands. “This skin, it fits me so well. Like it was empty before I stepped into it.”

In a strange kind of way, it’s true. Sam’s disguises, straight-A student and good son and human being, have all crumbled, with time, against the force of his true self. What true self has there ever been for Dean? His coat, his gun, his car, his belief in a father and a son and a holy mother, aren’t they all hand-me-downs?

Footsteps, faint at first but drawing nearer, are echoing through the narrow passageway. Sam looks up at the shapeshifter, and the shapeshifter looks back at him.

“I’m going to kill you,” Dean’s mouth says.

“You won’t,” Sam says, gentle. 

It’s the strange inverse to a conversation they’ll have months from now. But, of course, Sam doesn’t know this, and the moment passes.

When Dean surges forward to bury his knife in the shifter’s back, it whips around, faster than Dean thought possible. It catches the handle of the knife just as the tip scrapes against its chest. They are of exactly equal strength, Dean pressing forward with the knife and the shifter holding him at bay. But the adrenaline and hatred coursing through Dean gives him the upper hand. He watches the awful grin fade from the shifter’s face as the knife sinks into its chest. 

Dean watches the blood stain the shifter’s shirt. He watches the life fade from its too-bright eyes. He watches his own blood seep past its lips. It takes the shifter a long minute to die, but it dies in Dean’s body. Staring down at his own corpse, Dean can only feel a strange relief, and he breathes out a quiet  _ bismillah _ . He wonders if he looked that restful when he was dying in Massachusetts.

“Dean,” Sam says. He can’t help feeling a stab of horror, watching the stain of blood on Dean’s body spread down a stolen shirt. Dean shakes himself and kneels next to Sam to untie him. The knots are loosened from Sam’s efforts, and Dean only has to tug for them all to come undone. Behind them, the body begins to steam.

“You all right?” Dean says, gruff. His eyes catch on the wooden cross around Sam’s neck. It gives him pause, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Yeah,” Sam says, rubbing the feeling back into his hands. “Are you?”

“Am I?” Dean shakes his head, laughing. The sound feels a little alien in his throat. It will take a few hours before it feels natural there again. “I’m fine, man. We need to get the hell out of here.”

Dean pulls the knife from the shapeshifter’s body. It’s decomposing rapidly, breaking down into a puddle of slime and skin and blood.

“That’s me, huh?” Dean says absently, wiping the knife on his jeans.

“What? That?” Sam says, getting to his feet. “I mean, yeah, if the cops find it, you’ll be a match. But getting rid of it won’t help us now.”

It’s only kind of what Dean meant, but he nods anyway.

They emerge from the sewer and find themselves utterly lost. The sun is rising weakly over the city. Dean sticks the knife in his jacket pocket and sits heavily on the curb as Sam studies the bus map. Dean is finally feeling the exhaustion of the last week settle over him.

“Do we even have change for the bus?” Dean grunts. Sam kicks him gently in the side before leaning back against the bus stop. Sam opens his wallet and shakes through it for change. He’d dropped the five next to the vending machine, but it doesn’t matter anyway, not without a change machine nearby.

“Seventy eight cents,” Sam says. “Maybe the bus driver will look away while we do the string and coin trick.”

“Well,” Dean says. “I don’t have any string, either.”

Sam hums. He lets his head fall against the bus stop, rubbing absentmindedly at his cross necklace. Dean’s heart beats, right under the burn scar which is right under his brass necklace which is right under his bloodstained shirt. They wait almost twenty minutes for the bus, smeared with blood and filth and smelling like the sewer. It turns out, when the bus comes, that the change reader is broken, and the bus driver waves them on without saying a word.

For the bus ride back to the motel, Dean and Sam crammed together on a two seat bench not big enough for two big men, snickering and poking at each other like children, it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to forget that Dean almost died and almost let himself and then came back just to kill himself for a heartbeat’s rest. It’s easy to forget how many times Sam’s faith has been shattered and how, through it all, the wooden cross on its black string is still tied around his neck. It’s easy to forget that Sam is technically not human, that Dean is human only by technicality, that this is a big country full of humans and monsters that would very much like to see the pair of them dead or gone.

The walk from the bus stop back to the motel is almost peaceful, in the empty hour right before the city starts to swarm with people heading to work. They almost walk right past a sleeping Jason and his little black and white TV, but Dean’s face, at once foreign and familiar, is splattered across the news. It’s a relatively new mugshot, from the arrest in Silverton, Oregon.

“Oh, what the fuck,” Dean says. 

“Your hair looks like shit,” Sam says, squinting at the TV. Dean cuffs him on the arm, and Sam grins back at him.

Then the screen switches to the early morning news. Traffic and weather reports have been pushed for something a little bloodier.

“Dean Winchester should be considered armed and extremely dangerous,” Officer Amanda Herschel says. “DNA evidence implicates him in at least two deaths, including Emily Stine in Detroit and Max Miller in East Bridgewick, Maine.”

Ever since Dean Winchester slipped from Amanda Herschel’s fingers last November, she’s been building a file on him. No one really thought it would come to fruition, least of all Herschel, not until the supposed murder of Max Miller in Maine. But now Dean Winchester has committed murders in two states, and suddenly, he’s Herschel’s ticket from small town cop to federal hotshot.

“You’re telling me this is the same cop from fucking Oregon?” Sam says incredulously. “No way. She’s been fixated on you this long?”

“She wants to fuck me so bad,” Dean says. Sam doesn’t laugh. Onscreen, Herschel is detailing the circumstances of Max’s death.

“An absolute monster,” the TV anchor says, shaking her head. “Just horrific.”

Then Jason starts to wake up, and Dean and Sam stampede each other back to the room.

Dean Winchester’s face has been copied and printed and disseminated all over the city, and it will be all over the country soon. His mugshot looks like this: tousled black hair, sticking up slightly with just a little too much hair gel, stubble from a day past his last shave, a strong jaw that hasn’t yet been scarred by a shtriga’s claws, a slight upturn in his mouth because he was about to laugh at something the photographer had said. He was wearing his father’s leather coat and a black t-shirt below it, his necklace glinting colorlessly in the shitty photo. This photo will be dissected a hundred times in the coming months. White news anchors with glossy teeth and sprayed-slick hair will point out the inhuman glint in his eye. Officer Amanda Herschel (promotion to FBI agent pending, once she gets her application in order) will become the darling of daytime talk and evening news, a hero crusader in new boots and a shiny badge. Dean Winchester’s face is public property now, and there’s a warrant out for his body.

So Dean and Sam get the fuck out of dodge. They switch out their license plates, drive for six hours southeast, sleep for a few hours on a deserted side road, switch out their plates again and keep driving. Sam dreams, disjointed but deep, and he has a vision of Meg. This time, she doesn’t notice him watching her. This vision will not come to pass for several weeks.

Meg stands at the shoulder of the Yellow-Eyed Man. She is focusing hard on the older hunter standing before them, and her power keeps him standing in place like so many ropes. The hunter, Gibson, has offended the Yellow-Eyed Man, but Sam does not know this. He only knows that when the Yellow-Eyed Man looks at Meg and lifts an eyebrow, her face goes smooth and blank. She moves forward, slow and jerky. It’s almost tender, the way she lays her small hand on Gibson’s face.

“Where is he?” says the Yellow-Eyed Man. He is referring to John Winchester. Sam does not know this, but he will.

Gibson’s face has already gone white with pain, but he stands his ground, staring into Meg’s face. “You like being a demon’s bitch?” he asks, his voice almost inaudible. “Daddy’s blunt instrument?”

Meg’s thumb strokes the thin skin under Gibson’s eye, and he lets out a guttural cry. Meg is an excellent torturer. She’s been doing it for years.

It feels like hours that Sam stands there rooted to the spot, watching Gibson writhe in agony. He never gives up John, but he does say this, wild-eyed and spitting: “He has the Colt. You’re fucking dead, both of you. All of you damned freaks.”

The Yellow-Eyed Man looks thoughtful. Then he says, “Kill him. Slow.”

And so she does. She is and always has been her father’s favorite weapon.

Sam startles awake when Dean pulls into a parking lot. It’s evening, soft blue shadows interrupted by the harsh neon light of the BLACKTOP DINER sign.

“Internet access,” Dean says by way of explanation. “Gotta check up on myself.”

“Ew,” Sam says, blinking. The dream is weighing on his mind. He tries to remember Meg’s dead number, but he can’t.

“Mind out of the gutter,” Dean says, slapping Sam’s shoulder. “I wanna see myself on the FBI’s most wanted page.”

So they slope into the Blacktop Diner, too big and too dark not to be noticed in the empty restaurant. Sam’s got a headache that won’t leave him alone, but it isn’t bad enough to waste the last few Advil they’ve got, so he just slides into the booth and orders herbal tea with dinner.

“Herbal tea,” Dean repeats, genuine disgust in his voice as he opens the laptop.

“He’ll have the same,” Sam tells the waitress, and Dean glares so heartily that the waitress looks a little unnerved.

“It’s good for you,” Sam says, with all the self-righteous irony of a twenty two year old kid who isn’t half as healthy as he thinks he is. “It’s relaxing.”

“Whatever,” Dean says. He spins the laptop around and pushes it at Sam. “Do your thing.”

“It’s just Yahoo Search,” Sam says, snorting. He does the search himself anyway. 

Dean Winchester is listed first on the most wanted page. Dean leans forward, a little too excited, and Sam smiles as he angles the screen towards Dean.

“Dude,” Dean says, a grin spreading over his face. “I’m like… like Butch fuckin’ Cassidy.” He leans back in his seat. “You need to get that waitress back. The Sundance Kid does not order  _ herbal tea _ .”

Sam outright laughs at that. “All right, Butch,” he says. “You’re not exactly a hero, dude.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, scanning the screen. “Well, you’re not exactly Sundance.” His grin broadens. “You’re not even on here.”

“What?” Sam pulls the computer back towards him. “Where’s known associates?”

“Nope,” Dean says gleefully. “I’m armed and dangerous. You’re harmless, kiddo.”

“I am not-” Sam catches himself, but the little frown on his face just makes Dean laugh harder. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sure thing, Etta,” Dean says, cackling.

They fall quiet when the waitress, a shy thing named Cara, delivers their burgers and tea to the table. But Cara spends plenty of time watching the news, with nothing else to do in the empty little diner, and when she looks at Dean, sees the necklace hanging around his neck, recognition stirs her uneasy senses. She goes to the back and searches up  _ detroit murder,  _ and there’s Dean’s mugshot, plain as day.

Cara calls the police. She’s too afraid to go back out to the main floor. She doesn’t see Dean stuff his burger down his throat in two bites and abandon the tea on the table. She doesn’t see Sam take the teacup delicately in his big hand, the laptop slung under his arm, and follow Dean out to the car. 

The Impala in its getaway rushes past a squad car on its way to the Blacktop Diner. Sam swings the teacup back in a few swallows like it’s whiskey instead of chamomile tea with honey, and he throws the cup out the window to break into a hundred pieces on the pavement.

They are cheerful, but they know their time is running up, and you should know it too. The Winchesters are not long for this world, hunted as they are by humans and monsters alike. They will stay to the shadows for as long as they can, and they will fail. Not long from now, they will be wrenched into the light. Their bodies will cease to be their own.

I told you some time ago that there would never again be a moment where there would be love enough to make all the sadness go away. This is still true, but only because there will always be sadness in the way you love your brother. The more they love each other, the sadder this story becomes.

So I will leave you with this: now, at the beginning of the end, Sam and Dean love each other. When it all ends, they will love each other so much it will hollow them out with the fierceness of it.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr @ toxicsamruby


End file.
